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LiBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



UNITEB STATES OF AMERICA, 



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NEED OF UNION; 



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HOW DIVISIONS HURT THE CHURCH 



" And one shall say unto Him, — What are these wounds in 

ihy hands? Then he shall answer, — Those with which ! was 

wounded in the house of my friends." 

Zechariah, xiii. 6. 



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By GEORGE E. THRALL. 




PUBLISHED BY 

THE UNION EDUCATION COMPANY, 

NEW YORK. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by 

GEORGE E. THRALL, 
in the Office of ttie Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



The Library 
OF Congress | 



WASHINGTON 



PREFACE. 



"There shall be one Flock (^poimne)^ and one Shepherd." John 
X. i6. — Jesus Christ. 

" For ye are yet carnal; for whereas there is among you envying 
and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men ? For 
while one saith, ' I am of Paul,' and another, ' I am of Apollos,' are 
ye not carnal ? " i Cor. iii. 3, 4. — St. Paul. 

" He has not the love of God who does not seek the unity of the 
Church." — St. Augustine. 

" The Gospel cannot accomplish its great triumph, and collect 
the redeemed from every land, until the law of Christ be fulfilled by 
these Protestant sects, until they become one." — Richard Baxter. 

" I affirm with awe and trembling that while the Church con- 
tinues in her present divided and factious condition, she is a false 
witness to her Redeemer and Lord; she fatally misrepresents His 
principles and His Kingdom to the millions He died to save." — 
President Sturtevant, of Illinois College. 

" I do not believe that Christianity administered by denomina- 
tional machinery, will ever reach the masses." — Rev. E. P. Marvin, 
of Lockport. 

*' I believe our divisions are eating all faith out of the American 
heart." — Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota. 

" In my judgment, it is about time for the truly Christian people 
to begin to look the matter of denominationalisms square in the 
face, as being themselves morally wrong before God, and to cease 
from- expecting real Christian union without Church oneness." — 
DoRUS Clarke, D.D., of Boston. 

" Keep you your opinion ; I mine, and that as steadily as ever. 
You need not endeavor to come over to me, or bring me over to you. 
I do not desire to dispute those points, or to hear or to speak one 
word concerning them. Let all opinions alone on one side and the 
other. Only 'Give me thine hand.' " .... " Love me with a very 
tender affection, as a friend that is closer than a brother, as a brother 
in Christ, a fellow-citizen of the New Jerusalem, a fellow-soldier en- 
gaged in the same warfare, under the Captain of our salvation." — 
John Wesley. 

" The union of Christians — that is the Reformation of the Nine- 
teenth Century." — Dr. Merle D'Aubigne. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

DIVISIONS HURT THE SAVIOUR. 

The Body of Christ 7 

Apologies for denominations 10 

Denominations in Corinth 14 

The union societies 16 

So-called union meetings 18 

The Second Advent 21 

CHAPTER H. 

DIVISIONS GRIEVE THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

Our missionary failure 26 

Mohammedanism 30 

The Holy Spirit grieved 32 

Revivals 34 

A strange thing 35 

The Hippodrome and the Depot. 37 

CHAPTER HI. 

DIVISIONS HURT THE FOREIGN 
FIELD. 

What is the trouble ? 41 

Testimony of missionaries 42 

Testimony of heathen 44 

Heathen visitors 47 

Mexico 50 

Italy 52 

India 54 

Japan 58 

CHAPTER IV. 

DIVISIONS HURT THE HOME FIELD. 

A Christian Church 64 

The Eastern States 68 

"Out West" 71 

How we work this field 73 

Waste of money 'j'] 

Waste of machinery 81 

Causes apathy 85 

Causes infidelity 89 

Trifling remedies 91 

(4) 



CHAPTER V. 

DIVISIONS HURT THE MINISTRY. 

The minister's true position 95 

This position hurt 99 

The question of support 102 

Clerical salaries .... 104 

Clerical removals 106 

The aged clergyman 107 

Effect on clerical stamina 109 

CHAPTER VI. 

DIVISIONS HURT THE TRUTH. 

The light of the world 112 

The one Truth 113 

Hidden from men 116 

Growth of knowledge hurt 121 

Range of knowledge hurt 125 

Development hindered 128 

Party zeal 1 30 

Sectarian bishops 131 

Broad-churchism 133 

CHAPTER VII. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR ONENESS. 

Christians really one 136 

The one Church 143 

What is the Church } 147 

The one organization 148 . 

The one group 151 

The oneness hurt 155 

Sects not represent the Church.. . 157 

Sects not strengthen the Church . 1 59 

The wrong concealed 161 

CHAPTER VIII. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR FELLOWSHIP. 

Our schisms 165 

Division wrong in itself 168 

The origin of it 172 

Scripture fellowship 175 

Difference of opinion 176 

The Divine example 182 

This fellowship broken up 183 

The Lord's Supper 187 



Contents. 



CHAPTER IX. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR LOVE. 

Love, the spirit of Christianity. , . 194 

Love, the sign of Christianity . . . 195 

Love has been hurt 195 

Denominations separate us 197 

Separation begets bigotry 198 

Bigotry begets strife 202 

Drifting farther apart 207 

Love, the foremost duty 211 

Love will come if we let it come. . 213 

Union in love easily attained 215 

CHAPTER X. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR VARIETY. 

Variety in creation 218 

Christian variety a blessing 220 

Essential to happiness 222 

Variety infinite 225 

Worship 227 

Reciprocal benefit 229 

Compression and schism 232 

Worse than schism. 235 

Toleration 237 

The principle acknowledged 239 

Controversy 241 

CHAPTER XL 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR LIBERTY. 

Individual liberty 245 

This liberty lost 249 

The sectarian yoke 253 

Sectarian laws 256 

Ministerial penalties 258 

Liberty of preaching 261 

Liberty of enterprise 266 

Gospel liberty safe 271 

CHAPTER XII. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR DISCIPLINE. 

Discipline perverted 275 

The world let in 276 

Worldly money 277 



Worldly boarders 281 

Worldly music 283 

Worldly members 284 

The unguarded pass 286 

Too weak to discipline 289 

Worldly money, no help 290 

Methodist experience 294 

Victor Hugo's suggestion 296 

CHAPTER XIII. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR CHARITY. 

The common treasury 298 

The entire surrender 301 

The full scope 3^3 

Contraction fatal 306 

The Church of New York 309 

How it ought to be 312 

How it is 314 

The impression made 316 

Charity through agents 319 

Charity in confusion 327 

CHAPTER XIV. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR TESTIMONY. 

The sure evidence 324 

Ratio of converts declining 326 

What is the matter } 328 

Tone of decision lost 331 

Benjamin Franklin 333 

Stephen Girard 334 

Abraham Lincoln 336 

The Centennial Exposition 338 

Growth of infidelity 340 

CHAPTER XV. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR POWER. 

Power of union 346 

Weakness of sect 348 

Feeble with God 35° 

Feeble against Popery 353 

Feeble against prevailing wrong.. 358 

Feeble in the nation 361 

Church power no danger 367 



CHAPTER I. 
OUR DIVISIONS HURT THE SAVIOUR. 

" O, may that holy prayer, 

His tenderest and His last, 
His constant, latest care. 

Ere to His throne He passed, 
No longer unfulfilled remain. 
The world's offence, His people's stain !" 

THE BODY OF CHRIST. 

It was a peculiarity of the early Christians that they took 
in a very literal way, those numerous passages of Scripture 
which identify the redeemed with their Redeemer. In their 
baptism they had the initial X, representing the name of Christ, 
marked upon their foreheads ; in making their signatures they 
used this initial, as if Christ's name had become their own ; 
when interrogated as to their faith, their answer was, " We 
are the sons of God ; " and at death this name of Christ was 
inscribed upon their tombs. Professor De Launay, who spent 
much time in exploring the Roman Catacombs, speaks of 
distinguishing the Christian tombs by this mark, and also by 
the frequent motto, " In ChristT 

Looking into the Testimony, we find that at the moment 
of our faith there is born in us something we did not have 
before ; not a new habit, or motive, or principle, or hope, but 
a new life. A foreign plant, an exotic comes up from the soil 
of the heart, like a lily from a compost heap ; a divine exist- 
ence rises from a bed of corruption. It is not a lower life 
developing into a higher, but a life rooted in its opposite, a 
life springing up from death. The old nature is left as incur- 
ably corrupt — " dead in trespasses and sins ; " '' that which is 
I orn of the flesh is flesh" — and out of it comes what the 
Bible calls " the new creation." Thus are we " quickened 
together with Christ," " begotten again unto a lively hope." 

(7) 



8 Omi^ Divisions Hurt the Saviour, 

This explains that strange presence within us of both Deity 
and devil, as set forth in the seventh of Romans ; it explains the 
many allusions in the Gospel to our actual oneness with the 
person of our Lord — " Born of God ; " '' Created in Christ 
Jesus ; " "As Christ is, so are we in this world ; " " Our life 
is hid with Christ in God;" "Know ye not that ye are 
the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in 
you," etc. 

We generally slide over these as figurative expressions, but 
the first Christians took them as written. They read the 
Epistles as really directed to the " Beloved in God," to the 
" Brethren in Christ." They looked on themselves as actually 
one with Christ ; crucified with Him, dead with Him, risen 
with Him, justified, sanctified, and glorified with Him. This 
belief gave them a feeling unknown before and scarcely known 
since ; a feeling of joyousness and vivacity, of utter freedom 
from condemnation. It made their lives an exultation, their 
music a song, their holy supper a banquet of delight. It led 
them to actually despise this present world, to often court 
martyrdom, and to look so eagerly for the second coming of 
the Lord that the Apostles had to rebuke them for their im- 
patience. 

We find in this the secret of the unity of the early 
Church. There was no fixing or arrangement about it ; no 
councils were called, or plans of agreement drawn up. They 
were a body corporated in Christ. Each Christian, as he 
looked on himself, said, " I now live, yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me ; " as he looked on his fellow, he said, " Christ 
in us, the hope of glory ; " as he looked on the whole body 
of believers, he saw them as parts of Christ, " He is the Head 
of His body — the Church." Unity came, of course, just as 
one person comes from one soul. Believers no more thought 
of judging each other than the right hand thinks of judging 
the left. They no more divided from each other, or cut each 
other off, than one foot goes without the other foot, or one 
eye uncouples from the other eye. Christ was left to manage 
His own body. The government was in the Head, not in the 
arms, or fingers, or toes. 

The early Christians signified this when they ate the Lord's 
Supper. They always had on the table a single loaf of bread. 
Partaking of this one loaf, they held as showing them, and in 



Our Divisions Hurt the Saviour, 9 

a certain sense making them, one body. This idea is unfor- 
tunately lost in our present translation of the Bible, but it is 
clearly exhibited in the original, which reads : " The loaf 
which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of 
Christ ? For we, being many, are one loaf, one body ; for we 
are all partakers of that one loaf." i COR. x. 16, 17. 

The inspired writers take great pains to set forth this truth. 
St. Paul says in the Ephesians, " God gave Him to be the 
Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the ful- 
ness of Him that filleth all in all." And again, in ist Corin- 
thians he says, ''As the body is one, and hath many members, 
and all the members of that one body, being many, are one 
body ; so also is Christ!' Pause, believing reader, over these 
last words, until you have taken in their full meaning — nay, 
but you can not take it all in — "So ALSO IS Christ." — The 
Church and its Head, as one, are called by that one name, 
''The Christ." "We are members of His -body, of His 
flesh, and of His bones." 

It gives us a clearer idea of the wrong of division in the 
Church, to look at it in the light of this fact. We see it, then, 
not merely as an unfortunate disagreement among friends, we 
see it as a cruelty, a crime ; we see it to be the mutilation, the 
amputation, the dismemberment -of a living body, the body of 
Jesus Christ. The apostle .considers it and speaks of it as 
exactly that. Hear him : " Now ye are the body of Christ, 
and members in particular ; " " There should be no schism in 
the body, but the members should have the same care one for 
another." 

Looking at it in this way, we may get a clue to the strange 
earnestness which Christ Himself manifested on this subject. 
He seems to regard division as a wrong done to His divine 
person. The unity of His people was a thing He did not so 
much argue, or entreat, or command ; it was a thing for which 
He poured out His soul, over and over again, in agony of 
prayer. It was in His mind connected in some divine way 
with his own oneness with the Father : 

"■ That they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, 
that they also may be one in us ; that the world may beheve that thou hast 
sent me. 

" And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them ; that they may 
he one, even as we are one. 



10 Oitr Divisions Hurt the Sa 



vtour. 



" I in them, and thoa in me, that they may be made perfect in one ; and 
that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as 
thou hast loved me." — John xvii. 21, 22, 23. 

In this way He prayed for it ; prayed for it just before 
Gethsemane and the cross ; prayed for it while Judas was 
bargaining away His blood. In that solemn hour the thing 
on His mind was the unity of His people, and He dreaded their 
division, the division of His spiritual body, more than He did 
the tearing asunder of His flesh and bones on the tree. 

In view of this anguish of our Lord on the subject, the 
coolness with which Christians look on His body cut into a 
hundred sects, is amazing. At the close of his presidency, 
Washington sent a farewell address to his countrymen. Call- 
ing himself " their old and affectionate friend," he urged them 
to avoid division, and to make their union perpetual. Those 
words have been an inspiration to the Republic ; three hun- 
dred thousand lives have been laid down to make them good. 
But the d3/ing prayer of Jesus, among those called by His 
name and saved by His blood, seems unheeded. He looked 
down from the cross, and saw the soldiers parting His raiment ; 
He looked forward and saw us rending His body. We know 
it, yet there is hardly an effort to stop the wrong. 

APOLOGIES FOR DENOMINATIONS. 
The excuses made for this state of things cannot stand a 
moment's investigation. Let us consider them. 

(i). '^ The denominations are rights because the Israelites zvere 
divided into twelve tribes!' 

The two cases are not parallel. The Jewish nation (not the 
Jewish religion) was divided into twelve families, each of 
which had its distinct place around the tabernacle, and its dis- 
tinct territory in the promised land ; just as each State in this 
Union has its fixed boundaries. Our sects, on the contrary, 
are opposing religions, conflicting Christianities. Professing 
the same Bible and the same Saviour, they interpret that 
Bible differently, and organize that Saviour's Church on differ- 
ent models, and with their different creeds and different or- 
ganizations, are everywhere trying to occupy the same terri- 
tory at the same time ; so that every town and village in the 
land is disturbed ^:^y their strife. Our nation has not been at 



Our Divisions Htirt the Saviour, ii 

all like the Church, except from 1861 to 1865, when interpret- 
ing the Constitution differently, we all tried to get into the 
same fields at the same time. 

(2). '^ The denominations are merely the different regiments of 
the same army.'' 

The brigades and regiments of an army are the various 
members of one body, each of which has its functions specified 
in harmony with ail the other members. They all together 
compose one organization, moved by one mind. Each sect, 
on the contrary, is in itself a complete and independent body, 
professing to give the whole Christian truth, to do the whole 
Christian work, and trying to spread over the whole Christian 
field. No sect has a function which the others do not try 
to perform. Each has a full system of ministries, missions, 
schools, and publications ; each acts without regard to the 
rest, and all are pushing and foraging in the same places. 
That is not military organization — it is anarchy. 

(3). ^^ Each sect teaches some special doctrine better tha?i the 
other sects doV 

It is true that each sect is organized on some particular 
doctrine ; but this is not a blessing, it is an evil. Christ never 
authorized His truth to be partitioned out among separate 
parties. He meant each disciple to have all that He revealed. 
Two gentlemen in Troy composing a firm that failed, became 
bitter enemies. Among the assets was a valuable oil paint- 
i ig. Neither' would sell his interest in it to the other, nor 
allow it to be sold to a third party. So they cut the picture, 
fram.e and all, through the middle, and each partner took a 
half. That is what the sects have done with the truth. They 
have split it up among them. There is an Eye party, a Nose 
party, and a Mouth party ; an Arm party, a Breast party, and 
a Foot party. Each party has concentrated around its own 
lim.b of the Body, studied it and preached it, and in conse- 
quence has, in great measure, lost sight of the other limbs, 
and has distorted its own out of all proportion. Every truth 
that has been made the hobby of a denomination has, in this 
way, been injured ; magnified in one quarter and belittled in 
another. 

Take the doctrine of Election. It is in the Bible perfectly 
plain, and perfectly adjusted, and does not stand in the slight- 
est need of human explanation or support. But the Presby- 



12 Our Divisions Hurt the Saviotir. 

terian standards are set for its defense ; and they champion it 
until it crowds upon God's mercy and justice, and pushes even 
the infants into hell who stand in its way. Consequently, the 
Methodists dislike it, the Unitarians hate it, and the world 
at large looks on it with contempt. The doctrine would be 
held to-day with more even balance and by more people had 
the denomination never existed. 

In the same way Order has suffered from the Episcopalians, 
Liberty from the Independents, Baptism from the Baptists, 
and Spirituality from the Quakers. Every divine feature a 
sect has undertaken to set forth has been overdrawn. The 
Nose party has spread the nose half over the face, and the 
Mouth party has stretched that organ from ear to ear. The 
beautiful contour of Truth has been destroyed, and she stands 
before men as deformed and ugly. We have not only torn 
asunder the body of Christ, but we have disfigured it, until as 
Isaiah says, " His visage is so marred, more than any man, and 
his form more than the sons of men." 

(4). " Btit inivard harmony exists among the sects ; there is 
spiritual unity and that is all that is needed'' 

Study of the New Testament will show that mere spiritual 
unity cannot meet the requirements of the case. What the 
Saviour prayed for was not mere peace among His people, or 
friendship, or love — it was oneness. We were not to be differ- 
ent bodies, dealing kindly with each other, but one body. Our 
union was to be like that between the Father and the Son, 
not an alliance, but a unity of nature, an identity of life — 
'' One Body ; " that is the Bible word for it. The body is not 
a treaty of peace between independent eyes and legs and fin- 
gers ; it is not a partnership between the hands and arms, the 
limbs and the trunk ; it is one structure, moved by one mind 
and for one purpose. The Scriptural ideal of the church is a 
single, individual being — '^ a Bride adorned for her husband." 
We would leave it to any unbiased jury in the land whether 
friendship between different independent bodies answers the 
description of the Church given by St. Paul : 

" There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope ot 
your calling ; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, 
who is above all, and through' all, and in you all." 

" As we have many members in one body, and all members have not the 
same office ; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one 
members one of another." 



Our Divisions Hurt the Saviour. 13 

Indeed, it is impossible for oneness of heart to exist in a 
divided Church. The idea that there is inward unity between 
denominations which have opposing creeds, ministries, and or- 
ganizations, which have their separate schools, orphan asylums, 
and old ladies' homes, which can not go into any Western 
village, or into a single heathen country together, is a mere 
dream. In this world, inward feeling will be shown in out- 
ward action ; flesh and blood will move according to our 
thoughts. A gentleman being invited by a Boston lady to a 
tea-party '' to meet a few minds," replied, that he would gladly 
come, but he really would have to bring his body along with 
him ! So, whatever spiritual unity we may have, will be ex- 
pressed in our ecclesiastical relations. If a Christian loves his 
fellow Christian, he will seek union with him. John Wesley 
used to say, '' If your heart is as my heart, give me your 
hand." And Father Hyacinthe has put it in these words : 
" It does not suffice me to seek consolation in the Church in- 
visible ; I feel the need of reposing in the unity of the Church 
visible." 

In praying for the unity of His people it is certain that 
Christ meant a visible unity, for He adds, in two instances, 
" That the world may believe that thou hast sent me ;" ''that 
the world may know that thou hast sent me." It was to be 
a unity seen by men ; a unity perceptible to every spectator. 
Men never see our emotions— they only see our works, the 
exhibition of those emotions. Christ evidently meant, there- 
fore, not merely the unity of Christian souls, but the unity of 
the Christian Church. He meant that the inward feeling 
should be registered in the outward body. The oneness of 
His people was not to be a hidden thing, known only in 
Heaven, but an open protest against the selfishness, and 
strifes, and hatreds of the world ; a manifest proof that the 
new-born were under one Divine leader. 

We find, furthermore, that the Apostles understood Jesus 
to mean more than heart-oneness. They kept themselves and 
the churches they planted all in visible oneness. Had the 
division of the Church into denominations been contemplated 
by Christ or His apostles, they would have provided for it. 
But in all the New Testament there is not one word of direc- 
tion or legislation for them. We are nowhere told of the par- 
ticular functions which the different sects are to discharge. 



14 Oiw Divisions Hurt the Saviour. 

Presbyterians are not ordered to hold this position ; Metho- 
dists to go in the van, or Episcopalians to bring up the rear. 
Nothing is said about sects, except to prohibit and denounce 
them. 

DENOMINATIONS IN CORINTH. 

A movement toward denominational division started in the 
Church at Corinth. Those loving the doctrines of grace 
(Presbyterians) began to form a club under the name of Paul ; 
those loving warm emotions and eloquent appeals (Methodists) 
began to classify themselves under the name of Apollos ; 
those attached to the ancient forms (Episcopalians) tended to 
a sect under the name of Cephas, or Peter; and those inclined 
to do what the Saviour did in every act of worship (Baptists) 
were branching off under the name of Christ. What did St. 
Paul do? He condemned the movement with indignation. 
Hear him : 

" It hath been declared unto me, of you, my brethren, by them which are 
of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I 
say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos ; and I of 
Cephas ; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided .'' Was Paul crucified for you ? 
or were ye baptized in the name of Paul ? " 

Commenting on this passage, the venerable Dr. Schmucker, 
of the Gettysburg Lutheran Theological Seminary, says : 

" The apostle does not introduce into his argument the points of diversity 
^mong them, on account of which they were arraying themselves into dif- 
ferent parties. The simple facts that they were baptized into Christ, and 
into Christ alone, that is, were members of the^ Church in good standing, 
and that Christ must not be divided, are the only arguments he deems 
requisite to prove the impropriety of their divisions and of their assumption 
of different names. He would have them Christians, and nothing but 
Christians. Not Pauline Christians, nor Apolline, nor Cephine, nor Luthe- 
ran, nor Calvinistic, nor Wesleyan Christians ; not because he had any an- 
tipathy to Apollos or Peter ; but because any such divisions, based on dif- 
ference of opinion, or personal attachments, naturally tended to rend 
asunder the body of Christ. 

" The argument of Paul for the unity of the Redeemer's visible Church 
is two-fold : first, he maintains that this unity, and the impropriety of di- 
visions on party grounds, are evidently pre-supposed by the fact that all its 
members are baptized into the name of Christ Jesus ; and secondly, from 
the fact that all divisions based on difference are equivalent to dividing the 
one body of Christ. 

" The apostle therefore distinctly forbids the cutting up of those whom he 



Our Divisions Hurt the Saviour. 15 

would acknowledge as Christians at all, into different parties or sects. And 
this he does even by anticipation ; for in all probability these parties had not 
yet fully separated from one another." 

On the same subject, the Rev. James B. Dunn, D.D., pas- 
tor of the First Presbyterian church of Boston, remarks : 

"It is not the want of Christian love or fellowship among these parties 
that the apostle complains of. They are not charged with bitterness and 
hatred toward each other. This is not, as some seem to suppose, the grav- 
amen of his argument ; but it is against the existence of these parties that 
he utters his rebuke, and one would suppose his argument would be an 
overwhelming one, for it strikes at the root of the evil and cuts off the limb 
on which they stood. 'Is Christ divided? ' Were there more Christs than 
one } There was but one Christ ; so there is but one Church and one name 
for you all. ' Was Paul crucified for yo^i ? ' No. There was but one cru- 
cified for you, and that was the very Christ. As neither Paul, nor Apollos, 
nor Cephas was crucified for you, so there should be none of you calling 
yourselves Paulites, or Apollosites, or Cephasites. But as Christ was cru- 
cified for you, so you should be called by His name, or Christians. 

" Can it be possible that the divisions of Christ's Church in our day have 
so blinded our minds that we can believe the apostle did not mean to pro- 
hibit or condemn the various divisions among Christians of the present 
time ? Must we not be very blind not to see that the reasoning of this 
greatest of all the apostles utterly condemns all such names and divisions of 
the Church as exist this day } 

" It would seem, from this argument, that not until Christ is divided, till 
His seamless garment is rent, till there are more Christs than one, till Paul, 
or Apollos, or Cephas was crucified for us, and, by parity of reasoning, until 
Arminius, or Calvin, or Wesley, or John the Baptist, or some other men 
have been crucified for us, have we any right to take such denominational 
names. When our sins can be blotted out through some one of these men, 
when we are redeemed by their blood, when they are our Lord and Master, 
then may we be baptized in their name and be called after them. When 
one Christ has been crucified for the Baptists, another for Congregational- 
ists, a third for Lutherans, and so on to the end of the endless genealogies 
of the so-called Christian sects, then may they rightly exist, and not 
before." 

Denominations are therefore condemned in Scripture, even 
if harmony exists between them. 

And thanks be to the Holy Spirit who dwells in every con- 
verted heart, much deHghtful harmony does exist among 
us. Every true Christian does at times yearn toward his 
brethren, and frequently does he reach over the separating 
walls to shake hands with them. But this is no apology for 
our sects. It comes not from them, but in spite of them. 
For, just so far as there is attachment to a sect, there is culti- 



1 6 Our Divisions Hurt the Saviour. 

vated a sectarian spirit. Sectarianism comes from a sect as 
naturally as leaves come from a tree. Says Elder James 
Gregg, of Illinois : 

" Men talk sheer nonsense, who talk of belonging to a sect, and then .say- 
that sectarianism is all wrong ; talk of promoting unity while building up 
divisions. If sects are right, then it is right to have a sectarian spirit ; for 
is it possible to have sects and not have sectarianism as their natural fruit ? 
We talk against sectarianism and of cultivating brotherly love and Christian 
sympathy, and maintaining the present divisions. How strange the delu- 
sion ! Satan would be glad to have us good-natured in the work of tearing 
Christ's body apart, and building up the divided parts into churches as at 
present." 

THE UNION SOCIETIES. 

" But, are there not great union Bible, and Tract, and Sunday- 
school, and Missionary Societies, and do not these show us to be 
one f " 

Let us not be deceived. These associations are doing a 
noble work against denominational asperities, but " the health 
of the daughter of my people is not recovered." They mollify 
her cancer with ointment, but they do not go to its roots ; 
they do not cure it. The oneness of Christ's body means 
something more than hand-shaking, or well-wishing or occa- 
sional co-operation. On this subject, the Rev. T. P. Steven- 
son, editor of the Christian Statesman, says : 

" The sectarian principle seizes the divinely instituted organization, the 
Church of Christ, and rends it asunder in its zeal for certain inferior and 
subordinate ends, leaving the people of God to fall back on voluntary socie- 
ties for the discharge of their joint responsibilities and the promotion of 
their common work. Young Men's Christian Associations are nothing but 
a device for united effort rendered necessary by these divisions, and the 
Evangelical Alliance is a feeble attempt of a number of Protestants to do 
what the Protestant Church has, by schism, incapacitated herself for doing. 
Missionary, Temperance, Tract, and Bible Societies, and many others, may 
be added to this list. 

"How poor a substitute these afford for the sacred, authoritative, and 
powerful operations of a united Church, is evident, because they can never 
include more than a fraction of the members of the Church ; because their 
proceedings lack the authority and weight which clothe the action of the 
Church ; because the Church has a versatile power capable of being turned 
to any great moral and spiritual work, but a voluntary society must be lim- 
ited to a specific object, so that a host of such societies is necessary in 
place of the Church ; and because they are in a sense rivals of the Church, 
always doing her proper work, and sometimes usurping her exclusive func- 
tions. 



Our Divisions Hurt the Saviour, \ j 

" These societies are a necessary expedient in the day of the Church's 
helplessness ; they have done a noble work for religion and humanity, but 
not the least purpose they serve is as a practical protest against the breach 
of the Church's unity, and a strong argument for its restoration." 

But beyond this, inadequate as these societies are to make 
the one body of Christ, the little unity they do afford is not 
at all due to the sects. There is a misconception in the pub- 
lic mind on this point. Sectarian orators at union meetings 
take great pleasure in referring to them as showing our actual 
oneness. The fact is, they came from, and are supported by, 
private Christians, not the sects. A Methodist presiding elder 
hearing the Rev. Dr. John Hall say, upon a certain occasion, 
that all the denominations united in the American Sunday- 
school Union, quietly remarked that " the Methodist denomi- 
nation did not, but had a system of its own." Denomina- 
tions, as such, have never united in that society, or been 
represented in it ; it is merely individual believers from the 
different denominations who have united in it. Each sect has 
a rival institution of its own. There is a Methodist Sunday- 
school Union, a Baptist Sunday-school Union, an Episcopal 
Sunday-school Union, etc., etc. 

More than this. While these great fraternal organiza- 
tions are nobly kept up by private Christians, there has been 
from the first, unceasing warfare made upon them by the 
sects. The American Home Missionary Society, originally 
started as a union organization, has through sectarian opposi- 
tion been deserted by all but one denomination. The Amer- 
ican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions is hindered 
and crippled at every step by sectarian jealousy, and from 
many denominations never receives a dollar. The Baptist, 
Methodist, and Episcopalian sects have never even attempted 
to co-operate with others in foreign missionary work. The 
American and Foreign Christian Union, a society for united 
work among the Roman Catholics, is almost extinct on 
account of sectarian rivalry. While the public are entertained 
with lovely platform speeches, our sectarian leaders are aim- 
ing deadly blows at the American Tract Society, and the 
American Sunday-school Union. The Methodist bishops in 
a recent address exhorted their people as follows : 

" Supply yourselves especially with your own Church literature, and there- 
by make yourselves well acquainted with the teachings and the workings of 



1 8 Our Divisions Hurt the Saviour. 

the Church to which you owe so much. Patronize our Church periodicals, 
which, we are happy to say, are very ably managed. But if, inadvertently or 
otherwise, statements appear in any of them that oppose the long-accepted 
doctrines and usages of the Church, we exhort you not to allow such words 
to lead you astray from the divine truths of the Gospel, or to weaken your 
attachment to the order of our Church. Let us faithfully adhere to our 
doctrines and disciphne." 

At the meeting of the General Assembly of the Northern 
Presbyterian Church at St. Louis, the special Committee on 
Voluntary Societies brought in a report which ended with 
this sentence : 

" The Committee think the Presbyterian Church, which is the chief sup- 
porter of the most prominent of voluntary societies, can find a field for the 
full exercise of all its benevolent energies in the regular boards and com- 
mittees of the Church." 

This report, which was a blow aimed directly at the Amer- 
ican Sunday-school Union, was quietly shelved ; but it sig- 
nified what the sectarian leaders mean to do when they can. 

And a recent editorial in a prominent Congregational organ 
begins with these words : 

" As Congregationalists, we should take a deeper interest in the prosecu- 
tion of the Sunday-school work. It should be kept in the fore-front of all 
our plans. We can not afford, to fall behind other denominations in our 
zeal or in our wisdom in this respect. Neither can we entrust this great 
interest to union agencies. It is part of the Church-work, and must be 
cared for in our denominational arrangements." 

•SO-CALLED UNION MEETINGS. 

It is time also we opened our eyes to another device often 
used to plaster over and conceal the wounds in the body of 
Christ. We refer to the so-called " Union Meetings^ 

Delegations from two of our Western tribes, the Sioux and 
the Warm-Spring Indians, found themselves, not many years 
ago, unintentionally, both under the roof of the Grand Central 
Hotel in New York. These tribes are implacable foes, and have 
bedewed many a frontier field with each other's blood ; but 
being urged by the army officers who had them in charge, the 
delegations held a meeting in the hotel in presence of a com- 
pany of hotel visitors, waiters, and chambermaids. The Red 
men shov/ed their feelings with most uncultured frankness ; 
they did not conceal their hostility under polite phraseology, 



Oztr Divisions Hurt the Saviotir, 19 

or smooth off its edge with singing and prayer. Said Sitting 
Bull: 

" I am happy to meet these Indians among the white people ; and, if I 
had met them in war, I would have been glad. I love to fight my enemies', 
and also to meet them like this. I am a big warrior, and I am glad to fight 
my enemies like a warrior. We are enemies, and it can't be helped, but I 
shake hands with you all now." 

So they shook hands, passed from mouth to mouth the 
pipe of peace, interchanged some presents, and then departed 
in rather of a hurry to visit a gun store, where some choice 
rifles could be secured before their return home. 

In like manner, some Bible cause, or Temperance agitation 
or Revival up-rising will occasionally force our sectarian lead- 
ers on to the same platform. For the moment they yield 
to the situation. There are too' many spectators around to 
admit of contest, so they forego it. They mutually understand 
that for the occasion all must be friendly ; so they avoid dis- 
puted points, pass civilities around, and are cordial, and even 
hilarious. 

At the sight, the world goes off in astonishment and rapture ; 
''A Union Meeting." '' A Close-communion Baptist on the 
same settee with a Methodist ! " " An Episcopal priest actu- 
ally shaking hands with a dissenter ! " '* Compliments pass- 
ing, and no rupture ! " '' What breadth, what vast liberality, 
what an exhibition of oneness ! " And through showers ot 
praise the braves retire to their homes. 

Let us pause a moment, however, and consider what it all 
really means. If these meetings were to show remorse and 
contrition for our divisions, and to see how the bleeding body 
of Christ could be healed, we might rejoice. But what are 
the facts? Is there not, underneath these trivial and tempo- 
rary demonstrations, the understanding that the parties belong 
to different and irreconcilable bodies? If some uninitiated 
speaker should suggest, in the midst of their compliments, 
that now their disputes be laid aside forever and they become 
one Church, would he not be heard in silent scorn ? Ah, these 
union meetings do not mean that by a long ways. 

If the sectarians thus assembled spoke in the honest fashion 
of the Red men, they would say to each other, "We are ene- 
mies ; that is settled ; many a bitter conflict is on record, and 
many a hard-fought battle is yet to come off between us. We 



20 Ou7' Divisions Hurt the Savioitr, 

are warriors, and it would be more agreeable to have a polemi- 
cal set-to just here and now. If we could square off to an old- 
fashioned doctrinal debate, it would be worth while ; but under 
the circumstances it really will not do. See the reporters 
around, and the chambermaids in the galleries. No, no ; on 
this platform we must act as friends ; we must postpone the 
contest till we get back to our own fields ; we may use the oc- 
casion to get some choice new weapons for the next assault ; 
but, in the meantime, keep the tomahawk in the belt." The 
Warm-Spring Indians and the Sioux will scalp each other 
whenever they meet on the Yellowstone, without regard to 
what transpired under the leads of the Grand Central ; and 
after their union meetings, our sectarian orators retire to their 
lines and fire into each other with as keen a relish and steady 
an aim as ever. 

As we think it over, can we really believe that such an 
occasional politeness over sectarian walls, such an armistice 
between belligerent tribes, such a suspension of hostilities for 
an evening, was the oneness which occupied the last moments 
of the Son of Man ? 

When a convention is called to abolish our sects, when a 
union meeting comes together to unite, may God grant us to 
be there; but we have no heart for these palavers where sec- 
tarians meet to tell of the beauties of harmony and the bless- 
ings of remaining divided. And we entirely sympathize with 
the reply made by the Rev. Dr. Howe, of Philadelphia, when 
invited to attend one of them : 

" I should be much interested in hearing my Baptist neighbor, Dr. J's 
views or surmises of the ' modus in quo.' I have no objection to hearing 
him say that it must be on the basis of immersion in baptism ; or to hear- 
ing Dr. Wylie say it must be on the John Knox platform, or Dr. Bacon 
that preliminaries must be settled at Saybrook. All these constitute fair 
discussion. To brethren so impressed, I am ready to say, ' Come now and 
let us reason together.' But I cannot meet on the platform, nor waste my 
breath upon a man whose mind is so perverted that he will maintain that 
' sect ' is a blessing and not a curse — that it is a gift of God and not a tare 
of the devil's planting ; and that it is the duty of good Christian people to 
cherish it, and give it scope, and join hands to hold it up." 

That is the way to look at it. Let us be honest as to our 
great calamity. Let us not use any shifts or expedients, or 
pretences to cover up or explain away the unwelcome fact — 
the Body of Christ is cut to pieces among us. 



Our Divisions Hurt the Saviour, 21 



THE SECOND ADVENT. 

We learn from Scripture that this matter has much to do 
with the Second Coining of our Lord. 

We have become so used to His being away that we do not 
reahze what a strange thing it is. The Saviour loves to be with 
His people. At the seaside, and on the mount, and in the 
garden, His disciples were with Him. His heart yearns to 
be with His elect. And we need Him ; not a day, not an 
hour but we require His presence and protection. It is alto- 
gether as unnatural a thing for Him to be absent from us, as 
for a vine to be apart from its branches, or for a head to be 
aw^ay from its body. And yet, for fifty generations He has 
been gone ! 

Any one learning of Christianity for the first time, would 
be struck by this as, perhaps, the most extraordinary thing 
about it. In the summer of 1872 Red Cloud, chief of the 
Sioux, stood in the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, and 
said : " You have told Red Cloud that the Great Spirit came 
down from heaven and dwelt among the white men, and that 
He went up again. What did He go up again for? Red Cloud 
has come here, and he wants to find out ? " Was there any 
one in Philadelphia that could tell him ? 

In His last interview with His disciples before His death, 
Jesus dwelt on this point, which Red Cloud could not under- 
stand. He sorrowed over the coming separation : '' Let not 
your heart be troubled ; I go to prepare a place for you. I wall 
come again and receive you unto myself." Through four 
precious chapters Jesus prepares us for His absence, and tells 
of His return. The message he left to his bereaved disciples 
gazing on Olivet after His vanishing form, was : *' This same 
Jesus who is taken from you into heaven, shall so come in like 
manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." And His clos- 
ing message to us at the end of the Book of Revelation, is : 
'^ He who testifieth these things, saith — Surely I come quickly;" 
and the swift response of the Church is : " Amen, even so. 
Come, Lord Jesus." 

This return has been the desire of the saints in every era ot 
the Church. It was the long-expected day even with the 
patriarchs of old. Enoch prophesied of it. Daniel dwelt upon 



2 2 Our Divisions Hurt the Saviour, 

it, and from his ash-pile Job thought of it with rapture : " I 
know that my Redeemer Hveth, and that he shall stand at the 
latter day upon the earth." It seems to have been almost the 
only thought of the first Christians. His absence was their 
desolation ; His re-appearance their hope and joy. They be- 
came restless and anxious because it did not hasten. " Be 
patient, brethren," said St. James, " unto the coming of the 
Lord." In the Mamertine prison, under the hands of Nero, 
Paul forgot his chains in thinking of " that dayT ^' There is 
laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the 
righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me 
only, but unto all them also that love His appearing." And 
the glimpse of St. John into heaven showed him even the 
souls of the glorified waiting under the Altar for the day of 
the Redeemer's triumph, and crying out : " How long, O 
Lord ! " 

We have the Spirit, it is true, and He is a precious Com- 
forter ; but the bereavement is not less a fact because there is 
comfort. The written Word is precious, and the ordinances 
are precious, but it is the widow looking over the old-time 
letters and the vacant chair. No message from our Lord, no 
Bible is equal to the words from His own lips ; no Lord's Sup- 
per is as good as for Himself to be at the table. Reminders 
and mementoes are not enough ; they cannot satisfy for Christ- 
present, Christ in person. The Church wants to look upon 
her Lord, to hear Him and touch Him. There are times 
when holding intercourse with the unseen, the loved Unseen, 
we ache to get over this vicarious and epistolary correspond- 
ence ; we weary of faith, we want sight ; we weary with gazing 
beyond the horizon, and seeing through a glass darkly — we 
want Him face to face. 

Wkj/ does He not co7ne ? 

It is not the wickedness of the world that keeps Him away. 
He never said that the world was to be converted before His 
return. On the contrary, it will be worse than ever. " In 
the last days perilous times shall come ; evil men and seducers 
shall wax worse and worse." The world will not be ready for 
His coming; that is not expected. 

But it is expected that His Church will be ready for Him. 
The preparation of the Church, the Saviour's bride, is often 
spoken of in Scripture. In the Song of Solomon, Jesus is 



Our Divisions Hurt the Saviour. 23 

represented as coming to His Church, but she Is not ready for 
Him, and He goes away again. The final return Is spoken of 
thus : " The marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath 
made herself ready." "And I, John, saw the Holy City, the 
new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, pre- 
pared as a bride adorned for her husband." 

The Church must be prepared before her Lord returns to 
her. How ? " If we love one another," says St. John, 
" God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected In us." Broth- 
erly' love marks the Church ready for Jesus. '^ My dove," 
says He, " my undefiled is but one." The temple of Janus, 
the shrine of war, was shut at Rome when Christ came first ; 
it must be shut in the Church before He comes again. A 
hundred prophecies which speak of millennial glory, couple it 
with the perfect unity of the Church. '' The Lord shall be 
king over all the earth ; in that day shall there be one Lord, 
and his name one ; " "I will turn to the people a pure lan- 
guage, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to 
serve him with one consent ; " "I will give them one heart 
and one way ; " " They shall beat their swords into plough- 
shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks ; " '^ Thy watch- 
men shall lift up the voice, with the voice together shall they 
sing, for they shall see eye to eye'when the Lord shall bring 
again ZIon." Isaiah, grieved at the dissensions of Israel, 
found all his comfort In looking forward to Messiah's coming, 
when " the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard 
shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion 
and fatling together, and a little child shall lead them ; " 
'^ when Ephralm shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not 
vex Ephralm ; " when " they shall not hurt nor destroy in all 
my holy mountain." 

Union Is the final attainment of Christian experience ; it is 
the cap-stone of the arch. Division shows corruption still 
within us. " From whence come wars and fightings among 
you ? " asks the Apostle. " Come they not hence, even of 
your lusts that war in your members ?" Sin drives us apart, 
grace brings us together. As we come near to Christ, we 
come near to each other ; lines always close up as they ap- 
proach the centre. So long as we cherish division, so long as 
we glory In our denominational statistics, our denominational 
enterprises, our denominational success, it shows Ave are not 



24 ' Our Divisions Hurt the Sav 



tour. 



prepared for Christ's coming, do not expect it, do not want it. 
When we must join, and will join, at every cost, and over 
every obstacle, it shows us ready for Him, and He will come. 
Says Rev. Rowland Hill : 

" We talk much of the millennium, and of the signs of the times. I know 
of but one infallibly true harbinger of that event. When you hear of or 
see a Jew and an Arab, a Hindoo and a Chinese, an Episcopalian and a 
Presbyterian, a Baptist and a Congregationalist, a Lutheran and a Metho- 
dist, all united, with one heart and soul, in a prayer-meeting, then Satan 
will run away, and the angel will seize him in his flight, and cast him into 
the bottomless pit, and shut him up for a thousand years." 

But what is the case ? Mr. Dwight L. Moody recently 
stood before a vast multitude of Christians in the city of 
London, and said : 

" Is Christ wanted to-night ? If He should come, would He be welcome .'' 
Would the nations of the earth receive Him with delight and gladness ? 
What nation would make room for Him to-night ? Is there any nation 
under Heaven that would invite Him to come back ? If it were put to the 
public vote, what nation would vote to have Him come back to be their 
King? That nation does not exist. Talk about England and America 
being Christian nations ! Do you think either of them would invite Him 
to come ? 

" Not only that ; there is something a good deal worse than that. There 
is hardly a Church in Christendom that wants Him. Go to any of the 
churches next Sunday, and ask if they would vote to have Him back. Why, 
my friends, the Church has not got room for Him. She is not praying and 
longing for His return. If I should stand up and tell you that I had a 
message that Christ was coming to-morrow, I think this audience would 
be terrified. I don't think there would be a shout of joy going up. The 
fact is, there is no room for Him in the world yet. Our homes, our 
churches, the nations of the earth, are like that little inn at Bethlehem. 
There is room for everything else ; but in the Church and the world to-day 
there is no room for Him." 

How dared Mr. Moody stand in the very centre of Chris- 
tendom and say that ? And why did the people listen in 
silence ? Because they know, and we all know, that Christ's 
body is divided among us ; we are not ready for Him, and not 
being ready we dread to see Him. Our sectarian spires all 
over the land point at Him, like the hostile spikes of a cheval- 
de-frise, warning Him not to come, that He is not wanted. 
^^ Buty do we not pray — Thy kingdom come? " 
Yes. But do we mean it ? Can we be in earnest when we 
are all the while doing that which displeases Him and prevents 



Our Divisions Htcrt the Saviour 25 

His kingdom from coming? Why, that prayer prays our works 
off the face of the earth. What are we about ? Building 
sectarian sanctuaries, sectarian book-concerns, sectarian semi- 
naries, and sectarian missions ; yet the first approach of Christ's 
kingdom will be their doom. Looking at the Temple walls 
rising from the base to the summit of Mount Moriah, Jesus 
said, " Seest thou these great buildings ? there shall not be 
left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down." 
The disciples could hardly believe that ; those walls were so 
strong and high. But Titus came ; the Temple was burned ; 
the melted gold ran down into the cracks of the masonry ; the 
soldiers pried up the foundations to get it, and not one stoae 
was left upon another. So with our divisional walls. We 
may raise them high, and buttress them, and guard them with 
forces, but when Christ appears, down they will come. Our 
Presbyterian and Congregational and Methodist and Baptist 
and Episcopal designations will be cast away ; Christ will not 
allow His body to have any name but His own. Our groups 
around Luther and Calvin and Wesley will be dispersed ; 
Christ vv^ill not allow His bride to follow after other men. Our 
sectarian systems and boards and machinery will be utterly 
broken up ; Christ's dying prayer hangs over them like a 
cloud, and not one stone of them shall be left upon another. 

We know this perfectly well, and yet we are busy at our 
sectarian work. Never so busy as to-day. The Church, in- 
stead of mourning for her absent Light and Life, her Saviour, 
her Husband, her God, is not thinking of His return ; instead 
of bringing low the hills and filling up the valleys, and making 
the paths straight for the coming of the King, she is heaping 
the obstructions higher and digging the ditches deeper. 

He sees it all from Heaven. Is it any wonder that He is 
deeply hurt ; that He stays away? 



CHAPTER II. 
OUR DIVISIONS GRIEVE THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

"O Holy Spirit, Lord of Grace, 

Eternal Fount of love, 
Inflame, we pray, our inmost hearts 

With fire from Heaven above. 
As Thou in bond of love dost join 

The Father and the Son, 
So fill us all with mutual love 

And knit our hearts in one." 

OUR MISSIONARY FAILURE. 

The topic before a recent Methodist ministers' meeting 
was, " Why, with the splendid churches, large outlay of money, 
fine preachers, and attractive music, are there not larger spir- 
itual results ? " Hundreds of thousands of really Gospel ser- 
mons and lectures are preached in Christendom every week, 
but who sees approaching the conversion to Christ of even 
the so-called Christian nations ? The Rev. T. Dewitt Tal- 
mage said not long ago : 

" We have magnificent church machinery in this country ; we have costly 
music ; we have great Sunday-schools ; and yet, within the last twenty-five 
years, the churches of God in this country have averaged less than two con- 
versions a year each. There has been an average of four or five deaths in 
the churches. How soon, at that rate, will this world be brought to God ? 
We gain two ; we lose four. W^hat will this come to ? I tell you plainly 
that while here and there a regiment of the Christian soldiery is advancing, 
the Church is falling back for the most part, and falling back, and falling 
back." 

We are apt to forget this fact. If our own little corner 
shows marks of improvement, we imagine the world on the 
high-road to the golden age. We meet in our sectarian con- 
ventions in such crowds as to completely fill a village church ; 
we survey the vast assemblage and feel the inspiration of 
numbers ; we talk of progress and success. Illusion ! Let us 
(26) 



Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit, 27 

lift our eyes to a survey of the whole human family and we 
shall see a race Godless as ever it has been since history be- 
gan ; we shall see ourselves a mere speck on a surging sea of 
sin. 

We are not blind to our missionary encouragements in many 
parts of the globe. We do not forget that when first difficul- 
ties are removed, our progress may be more rapid ; but when 
we remember that fifty years have passed since our operations 
began, that thousands of lives and millions of money have 
been expended, and then consider the actual condition of 
mankind, we cannot but feel that something is wrong. 

The statistics, according to the best authorities, are in round 
numbers as follows : 

Present Population of the Globe, 1,400,000,000 

Comprising : 
Buddhists. — Atheists and annihilationists, acknowledging 

no God, no Redeemer, noresurrection from the dead, . . 363,000,000 
Brahminists. — Worshipers of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. 
The most sophistical and licentious of all the religions of 

the heathen, 175,000,000 

CONFUCIANISTS. — Foliowers of the Chinese philosopher, . 80,000,000 
INIOHAMMEDANS. — Whose trust is in the false prophet, . . 200,000,000 

Jews. — Denying the Saviour, ....._ 7,000,000 

Pagans. — Worshiping idols, 175,000,000 

Total without the name of Christ, . 1,000,000,000 

Nominal Christians, . 4:0,000,000 

Comprising : 

Roman Catholics, 200,000,000 

Greek Christians, 80,000,000 

Protestants, 120,000,000 

But these so-called Protestants include all who live in nom- 
inally Protestant countries, such as the United States, En- 
gland, and Germany ; and when we subtract the infidels, ra- 
tionalists, formalists, spiritualists, and the multitudes who care 
for none of these things, we come down to a little flock of 
evangelical believers, almost unseen in the mighty throng 
around them. 

Now, we do not expect from the preaching of the Gospel 
anything beyond what the Scripture warrants. It will accom- 
plish what the Lord has decreed, but it will not accomplish 



2 8 Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit, 

more. It will " call out a people for His name," and our 
efforts can do no more than help to make up the number of 
God's elect. Our orders are to go into all the world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature ; but v/e are never told 
that every creature will believe it. The blood was shed for 
all ; but not all will wash away their sins in it. This world, as 
a world, is lost ; the ship is doomed ; we cannot save it. All 
we can do is to save as many as possible out of the wreck. 

Making full allowance for this, however, there is still a lam- 
entable failure to account for. Compared with the first tri- 
umphs of the cross, our modern missions drag terribly. We 
have the same Word of God and the same promises of divine 
help ; we have men of piety equal to those of the apostolic 
age ; preachers ready to become martyrs for Christ's cause ; 
more money ; greater facilities for travel ; less opposition from 
the heathen ; and the printing-press. Every way the advan- 
tage is with us — but the success not. 

Consider the immense headway Protestant nations have 
gained in the world. 

English is to-day spoken by more people than any other 
European language. It is the only language in the world 
spoken by two great civilized powers, and it is the only lan- 
guage adapted for universal use. It is a compound language. 
Our law terms are from the Norman ; our military words from 
the French ; our nouns from the Latin ; our verbs from the 
German, and our scientific names from the Greek; while the 
Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew have 
all contributed a share. Being thus cosmopolitan, it is fitted 
to spread, and it is spreading. Eleven millions of Hindoos 
already speak it. Should it extend as rapidly during the next, 
as it has during the past hundred years, it will, in another cen- 
tury, be spoken by nearly as many people as now live on the 
earth. 

Protestant enterprise and thought are advancing equally 
with the language. English-speaking people already rule one- 
fourth of the earth's territory and one-fifth of its population. 
They own half the railroads and telegraphs, more than half 
the tonnage of all the vessels on the sea, and do as much ex- 
porting and importing as all the rest of men put together. 

Their ideas of government and the rights of man are shap- 
ing the politics of all nations. His supreme Potency, Son of 



Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit. 29 

the Moon, Brother of the Stars, etc., the Emperor of China, 
has learned that EngHsh Ambassadors are not to approach 
him on their hands and knees ; and the King of Siam, and the 
Mikado of Japan, influenced by our Western civiHzation, have 
decreed that courtiers shall no longer crouch and crawl and 
lie prostrate in their presence, but shall stand up like men 
and look them in the face. 

But while our language and power and politics are striding 
forward, our religion is hardly making any progress at all. 
While in twenty-five years from the crucifixion of Jesus the 
Cross was preached throughout the known world, and con- 
verts made in every clime, it is now scarcely holding its own. 
For every new station we build in Eastern lands we can find 
the traces of five early Christian congregations that have 
ceased to exist. 

The Protestant language opens the way for the missionary 
and Protestant flags shield him from harm, but the Protestant 
faith lags behind its opportunities. It is hard to say whether, 
on the whole, Christendom is a blessing to the heathen, or a 
curse. A noted traveler says, that in the ports of Asia Minor, 
at the Sandwich Islands, and on many other foreign shores he 
has seen the same vessel landing missionaries of the Cross, 
and cargoes of New England rum ; the missionaries to save, 
and the liquor to damn. Livingstone said that about the only 
art the natives, of lower Africa have acquired from their ac- 
quaintance with Europeans is the art of distilling spirits from 
a gun-barrel. How little religious influence do we exert over 
our own American Indians ! Running Antelope, a Sioux 
chief, says, that when he learned that the white men had 
killed their Saviour, he was astonished, but he changed his 
mind when he got better acquainted with them. 

We comfort ourselves with the steady growth of the Gospel 
among the Hindoos ; but do we realize the far more rapid 
growth in another direction ? The Rev. George Hall, of 
Madras, says : 

" The infidel philosophy of Europe is coming- in like a flood on India. 
Our young men now carefully study the works of Darwin, Huxley, Stuart 
Mill, and Colenso, and from such sources draw their objections to Chris- 
tianity. The opinion is widely spread among the most intelligent natives 
that Christianity is an antiquated superstition, believed in by very few, even 
in England, who are well educated." 



Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit, 



MOHAMMEDANISM. 

How little success do we have against Mohammedanism. 
The river in which Moses was laid — the sea which God divided 
— the city in which the Saviour bled — the country of the seven 
churches — the scenes of the Gospel's first triumphs — have for 
ages been under the power of the Moslem and seem likely to 
remain so. Why are we so powerless before this usurper? 
Over the central arch of the old Cathedral of St. John in 
Damascus, there is still visible an inscription, carved there by 
its early Christian builders, seventeen hundred years ago : 
'' Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and thy 
dominion endureth throughout all generations." For centu- 
ries that church has been a Mohammedan mosque, and its 
inscription has been mutely protesting against some great 
wrong which has emasculated Christianity, and given up to 
the foe its earliest and dearest possessions. Is there any 
doubt what this great wrong is ? Speaking of the leading 
Christian sects in and around Jerusalem, Mr. Thackeray says : 

" These three main sects hate each other ; their quarrels are intermina- 
ble ; each bribes and intrigues with the heathen lords of the soil to the 
prejudice of his neighbor. Now it is the Latins who interfere and allow 
the common church to go to ruin because the Greeks propose to roof it ; 
now the Greeks demolish a monastery on Mount Olivet, and leave the 
ground to the Turks rather than allow the Armenians to possess it. On 
anotlier occasion the Greeks having mended the Armenian steps which 
lead to the so-called Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the latter asked 
permission to destroy the work of the Greeks, and did' so. And so, round 
this sacred spot, the centre of Christendom, the representatives of the three 
great sects worship under one roof and hate each other ! " 

On this same subject, the Rev. Dr. Doellinger says : 

"In that place which is most venerable to all Christians the drama of 
Christian strife is continually presented to the deriding infidels. There, all 
churches and parties, Greeks, Russians, Romans, Armenians,Copts, Jacobites, 
Protestants — all confessions alike, have erected their castles and fortifica- 
tions, and strive in turn to injure each other, to take away a square foot of 
ground, or some holy place from one another. In the sacred places of Jeru- 
salem, Turkish soldiers must stand guard, and keep the Christians apart, 
who would otherwise flay each other ; and the key of the Tomb is in the 
hands of a Turkish pasha. The quarrel between the Latins and Greeks 
about the possession of the grave-church in Jerusalem was, as is well 
known, the immediate occasion of the great Crimean war in 1854." 



Ottr Divisions Gineve the Holy Spirit. 31 

There is a very common idea that Mohammedanism is 
effete. Never was there a greater mistake. It is neither dead 
nor dying, but is as full of vital force and propagative energy, 
though manifested in a different way, as when it overthrew 
the Empire of the East and threatened the conquest of Eu- 
rope. It is doing more with its schools and missionaries than 
it ever did with the sword. It is spreading a great deal faster 
than the Gospel is. Mussulmen calculate that in two hundred 
years they will conquer the world. We laugh ; but it would 
startle us to know the facts of their progress. 

They have their grip on three continents, from Hong-Kong 
to the Straits of Gibraltar. We are struggling with each other 
at the gates of China ; they are supreme" in the province ot 
Yun-Nan, and within the last ten years have turned that vast 
tract of country, called Western Chinese Tartary, into a Mus- 
sulman kingdom. In Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and Celebes, the 
Moslem faith is dominant. We have a foothold in India ; it 
already numbers thirty millions there, and is rapidly increas- 
ing. We are thinking of Ethiopia ; it is spreading with giant 
strides all over Africa. Mr. Pope Hennessy, Governor of the 
English. West African colonies, says, that the total number of 
professing Christians within his jurisdiction is less than the 
number of liberated Africans and their descendants, who have 
always been under the care of the Christian missionaries ; 
whereas, the Rev. James Johnson, a native clergyman, says, 
that three-fourths of the Mohammedans in Sierra Leone are 
recent converts from nominal Christianity as well as from 
paganism. Mr. Johnson further says, that Mohammedanism 
was introduced into Sierra Leone not many years ago by 
three zealous missionaries of that religion, and seems now to 
be rapidly gaining the ascendency in that Christian colony 
In other localities it has been equally successful, so that, ac- 
cording to reliable information, it has already leavened almost 
the whole of Africa to within five degrees of the equator. To 
the south of that line, Uganda, the most civilized State in that 
part of Central Africa, has just become Mohammedan. Last 
year a mosque v/as built on the shores of Lake Victoria Ny 
anza ; and the Nile, from its source to its mouth, is now with 
very few exceptions a Mohammedan river. There are whole 
tribes, such as the Jolofs, on the river Gambia, and the 
Haussas, whose power was shown in the late Ashantee war, 
who have become, to a man, Mohammedan. 



32 Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit. 

These are wounding facts for us. Mr. R. Bosworth Smith, 
Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, spoke of them recently in 
a lecture before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, but 
said, '' It was not to be regretted, as Christianity had tried 
Asia and Africa, and had failed, and the faith of Islam was 
better than paganism ! " This was rubbing vitriol in the wound. 

It is idle to encourage ourselves with a convert here and 
there while this is going on. Some great obstacle is blocking up 
the way of the Gospel. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT IS GRIEVED. 

The success of the Gospel '' is not by might, nor by power, 
but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." And the Spirit 
can make it as triumphant now as in the days of the Apostles. 
He can bring in by hundreds and thousands as well as by ones 
and twos. Whether our machinery was good or bad, whether 
our preachers were feeble in speech or eloquent as Chalmers, 
whether we were protected by influential flags or not, if the 
Spirit helped us the word in our mouths would be quick and 
powerful. But the Spirit holds back — that is the trouble. 

What is it that grieves Him ? 

The Apostles about to go forth to preach to the world, were 
first to wait at Jerusalem until the Holy Ghost should descend 
upon them. There was a seven-weeks' prayer-meeting, and 
their souls became one. " They were all with one accord in 
one place." '' Parthians and Medes, and Elamites, and the 
dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea and Cappadocia, in 
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in 
the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews 
and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians," had learned to forget 
their ancient prejudices, and '' breaking bread from house to 
house, to eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." 
Haughty Romans, scornful Jews, nettlesome Egyptians, crafty 
Cretes, and stolid Arabs had come to a single heart. Then, 
on the fiftieth day, came the Holy Ghost and victory — a mighty 
wind and tongues of fire ; Peter preaches and the hearers, 
pricked to the heart, cry out : '^ Men and brethren, what shall 
we do?" That day, three thousand converts are made. The 
work goes on. We think it a great thing to have additions to 
the Church every three months, or every year ; the apostles 



Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit. 2iZ 

vvould have wept and mourned at such progress. Then, " the 
Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved." 
And every time the Holy Spirit descends upon them, the fact 
of their union is specially mentioned. " They lifted up their 
voices to God with one accord ; " " The multitude of them 
that believed were of one heart and of one soul." 

This is the simple story. The dew of Hermon, emblem of 
the Holy One, descends on a city that is at unity in itself. 
The gift of the Spirit depends on the oneness of the Church. 
We are divided, and He does not come. 

The Church needs a day of Pentecost ; but to have it, we 
must fulfill the necessary conditions of Pentecost ; we must 
obey the command: '' Let there be no divisions among you." 
The cry everywhere among us is, *' Pray for the Spirit ! " 
'' Pray for the Spirit ! " But something must be done before 
we can get the Spirit. Before our prayer will be heard, we 
must come out from our sects, and stand together, and say : 
" Our Father." God will hear us then. 

The appeal is, " Work ! Work ! " But so long as it is the 
Presbyterian at work, and the Baptist at work, and the Metho- 
dist at work, it is in vain. We are too fast altogether about 
our work. The Church is not ready for work. She must be 
converted herself before she can convert sinners. A divided, 
alienated Church, cannot bring the world to Christ. God will 
not employ her. He will not sanction such an instrument. 
It is useless for us to preach the love of Christ, while we do 
not show it among ourselves. God has told us to be one 
family, and then be workers with Him. We are not such a 
family ; we are separated and jarring factions. There is a spot 
in our feasts of charity — nay, we have no feasts of charity. 
The Holy Supper is no longer a communion of the Lord's 
whole flock. There is not one table, but a hundred tables ; 
table against table, each claiming to be the true one. We for- 
bid each other's company at the Lord's Supper ; we will not 
go to one another's communion. We hold our opinions above 
the common Faith. Christ's home is turned into a scene of 
contention. 

Work ! No. Repentance, Reformation, Re-union, that is 
what we need — then we can work. 

" That they may be one, that the world may believer 

How many more years of failure and disgrace ; of Christi- 



34 Otcr Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit. 

anity feebly preaching in one hemisphere before a contemptu- 
ous infidehty, and trailing shamefully in another behind an 
exultant Mohammedanism, will It take for us to learn what 
that means? 

REVIVALS. 

What prevents a general revival of religion among us f 

The marked advances of the Church have always been along 
the line of revivals. Religious impulses come over the world 
in waves ; and it Is when the Spirit appears in this way, bear- 
ing down all excuses, and all refuges of Hes, that the Church 
is transformed from weakness into strength, from a little flock 
into gathering multitudes. Even the regenerated nature grows 
dry under the withering effect of the world, and needs not 
only the gentle dew, but the occasional emptying of the great 
clouds, the drenching of the early and latter rains. 

What is the Old Testament but a history of steady declen- 
sion, counteracted by periodical showers of grace ? Hear the 
Psalmist praying : '' Wilt thou not revive us again, that thy 
people may rejoice In thee ? " and Habakkuk : '^ O Lord, revive 
thy work in the midst of the years." The day of Pentecost 
was a revival of religion ; the Reformation was a revival of 
religion, and the growing Infidelity of the eighteenth century 
was swept away by the revival which followed the preaching of 
Wesley and Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards. As the saint- 
ed James W. Alexander said : " It is by a rapid Ingathering of 
many souls that God has heretofore condescended to elevate 
His Church to its highest prosperity." 

There has long been fervent supplication for such a revival — 
a mighty outpouring of the Spirit which should bless all sorts 
and conditions of men ; but for many years our prayer has 
not been heard. Great exertions have recently been made, 
and much local good has been done ; but the general upheaval 
we longed for has not come. Some stone Is at the well's 
mouth — what Is It ? 

We read in Isaiah that when God yearned to bless His 
people, who were then divided into two factions, He exclaimed, 
" O Jacob and Israel, thou art my servant, return unto me." 
In bestowing His grace. He would see them as only one serv- 
ant, and revive them as one people. 

Our last general revival began in 1857. The people were in 



Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit. 35 

pecuniary distress ; there was an awful shrinkage in values, and 
men's hearts were failing them for fear of the things that were 
coming upon them. The Fulton Street prayer-meeting began. 
People left their business in the middle of the day, and 
crowded into it to prostrate themselves before God. Denom- 
inationalism was completely cast aside and forgotten. Any 
man Vv^ho presumed to utter a sectarian thought was instantly 
silenced. Christians of every name sent up one united cry 
for grace, and city and country caught up the cry. Then the 
whole land trembled under the tread of the Conqueror from 
on high. Five hundred thousand souls were added to the 
Church. 

Since that period, our local revivals have almost universally 
sprung from the Week of Prayer, in which we all unite ; from 
the efforts of the Young Men's Christian Associations, which 
ignore sectarian lines ; from the Union Communions, and 
Union Sabbath -school Conventions, where denominational 
distinctions are submerged ; and from the preaching of evan- 
gelists, who go forth simply as Christians, and refuse to prose- 
lyte for or mention the name of any sect. 

It is beyond all question that the Great Revivalist, the 
Holy Spirit, comes when we unite and stays away while we 
are divided. 

A STRANGE THING. 

Now for the strange part of the subject. We all know this 
fact. It is not new to a Christian in the land. 

We all know that to have a revival we must unite. So cer- 
tain are the evangelists of this, that they will not go to labor 
in any city until they are assured that Christians will drop 
their sectarian names and come together in the work. Mr. 
Moody keeps away from a place until the clergy join in calling 
him ; and so does Edward Payson Hammond. Two hundred 
clergymen of all denominations met in London, not long 
ago, to confer for an outpouring of the Spirit ; they opened 
with a union communion, and arranged to begin by having, 
upon a certain Sabbath, a universal exchange of pulpits. 
They all felt that union was necessary to bring what they 
wanted, as a matter of course. 

We all know that union, rather than great preaching, is the 
vita] element in the matter. Our successful revivalists are not, 



36 Otir Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit, 

by any means, the best preachers among us. We have scores 
of parish clergymen head and shoulders above them in pulpit 
ability. There are five thousand towns in the United States 
now wishing some great evangelist would visit them so that 
they could have a revival, and all the while every element and 
instrument for a revival is in their own hands. A town in 
Illinois desiring a revival, the pastors sent a committee to 
secure the services of a celebrated evangelist who was labor- 
ing with great success in a neighboring place. Expecting to 
comply, he told the committee to see that all the congrega- 
tions united in the work. He found that evening, however, 
that he could not go. But the committee had learned the 
secret. They went home and called the people together for 
united prayer ; and without any outside help, a blessed work 
of grace followed. 

We all know that when the Christians of a place join in 
earnest prayer for a revival, it is sure to come. 

We all know that when they deliberately refuse to join, the 
revival is sure not to come. The ministers of one of our cities 
once met to arrange for a revival by means of a union of the 
churches in the Week of i Prayer. In the midst of their con- 
sultation one minister arose and said that '' he thought the 
churches sufficiently strong to go in for a denominational 
work ! " That was enough. There was no revival there then, 
and there has been none since. 

We all know that, let an evangelist vary his Gospel preach- 
ing with good sound arguments for his denomination, and no 
revival takes place. 

We all know that in a revival, when Christians begin to turn 
their efforts toward their sects — to gather in the fruits, as 
they call it— that revival then immediately stops. An eminent 
evangelist, under whose labors during thirty years over fifty 
thousand professed conversion, knew so well that sectarian 
harvesting was sure death to the work of grace, that he was 
accustomed, on beginning his labors in any town, to announce 
to the members of the churches, that if he learned of any of 
them engaged in proselyting while he was there, he would 
denounce them from the pulpit, by name, as enemies of Jesus 
Christ ! 

The strange part of it is, that knowing these facts, we 
never think of doing the simple thing they tell us to do. We 



Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit. 37 

want the Spirit to come, and we pray for Him night and day. 
In ten thousand ways He tells us that He cannot come until 
our divisions cease. We keep on praying, but never make a 
move toward abandoning the divisions ! 



THE HIPPODROME AND THE DEPOT. 

Mr. Moody comes to New York on condition that the dif- 
ferent sects unite to call him. We lay aside our isms and 
go to the Hippodrome as Christians. Glorious meetings — 
their overflow larger than our largest sectarian congregations — 
millionaires and bootblacks — ladies from Madison Square, and 
ladies from the tenement-house — what we have long wanted — 
the masses hear the Gospel. Such singing and such working ! 
Calvinists and Arminians, Immersionists and Sprinklers labor 
together in the inquiry-rooms. Mr. Moody is a Congrega- 
tionalist, Mrs. Moody is a Baptist, Brother Sankey is a 
Methodist. Nobody thinks of that. The CHURCH OF NEW 
York has at last had a chance to meet and show its colors ; 
and when, at its close, Dr. Armitage alluded to the love and 
actual oneness that had been exhibited, the multitude broke 
through the rules and sent up shout after shout in recognition 
of the fact. 

And now comes the question, What did that revival stop 
for? It had only just begun. It began nobly and with evi- 
dences of great power. Mr. Moody, in all his experiences, 
never felt so sanguine. He told his friends that he believed 
New York was going to surrender to Christ. He closed his 
first Friday evening sermon with the exclamation : " I believe, 
in my soul, we are going to see the greatest work in New 
York we have ever seen in this world." And he broke out 
again, in the same strain, at the opening of his next Sunday 
morning sermon, saying: "If it could ever be said that the 
field was ripe for the harvest, I think it could now be said of 
New York City. I never saw the work open anywhere as it 
has here. I have never seen so much after the first week to 
give encouragement." 

And yet, as to what was expected of it, that revival was a 
failure. The moment Mr. Moody left, it collapsed. Why ? 
It was not Mr. Moody's revival, but the Spirit's ; and Mr. 
Moody did not take the Holy Ghost away with him. Yet no 



38 Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit. 

sooner did the Hippodrome turn into a co.ncert-garden again 
than the revival was a thing of the past. All the Christians 
in New York could not keep it up. Why ? This was the 
reason : When we went to the Hippodrome we left our sects 
at the door ; when we departed from the Hippodrome we took 
them up again. We worked around Mr. Moody together as 
simple Christians, and we succeeded ; when he was gone, we 
worked as sectarians, and we failed. 

The Union tree was just blossoming when the sects held up 
their baskets to it for the fruit. The Church of New York 
rose up like a majestic wave, sparkling with blessings from on 
high, but hardly had it touched our famished shore, ere it was 
expected to be off, to recede like the tide, and leave its waters 
to the puddles along the beach. The few converts made were 
shut in to the separate denominations. There they soon 
learned new terms and sharp definitions, which they never had 
heard in the Hippodrome. They narrowed their range and 
turned their charities into channels. Some became Episcopa- 
lians and learned to sneer at the outsiders with no ministry. 
Some became Baptists and learned to keep Mr. Moody away 
from their communion table because he was not baptized. 
The very existence of the Church they were converted in was 
soon forgotten. 

Yes, the revival was over. The Church disappeared, and so 
did the Spirit. 

The same thing is repeated wherever the evangelists go. 
They went from New York to Philadelphia. The Church of 
Philadelphia gathered around them in the Market Street Rail- 
road Depot. Success again. The hearts of God's people were 
warmed and sinners were converted. But when Mr. Moody 
went away, the Church of Philadelphia was disbanded, and 
the denominations sharpened their sickles for the harvest. 
The sectarian papers urged their pastors to take advantage of 
the occasion. For example, this was what the Philadelphia 
Presbyterian said at the time : . 

" May we make a suggestion to the pastors whose hearts have been made 
glad by the large ingatherings lately made to their churches ? Many of 
those who have come freshly into the kingdom are ignorant of the great 
work which our Church has set herself to do in this land, and in all lands. 
They need instruction and they need information. They need to know 
what other churches a1 home and the churches abroad are doing. They 
need to be drawn into sympathy with all the plans and schemes of the Preb- 



. Ottr Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit, 39 

byterian Church, and to be made active workers in their own particular 
fields." 

Ah, yes, as to party issues, as to the plans and schemes of 
sect, the new converts did need instruction ; for not a word 
had they heard about them in the Depot. They had been 
taught there from the Bible, and from the Bible alone, and to 
become sectarians it was necessary for them to leave the Word 
of God and study the word of man. Their attention was 
turned from the common faith to controversies about opinion, 
and so that revival came also to an end. 

It will not always be so. The Church in Philadelphia is not 
closed forever. It will yet have a life and a name. Its door 
will yet swing open for all who love the Lord Jesus to come 
in and worship together, with no name over them but the new 
name from Heaven. Again, as eighteen centuries ago it was 
on Patmos, shall the voice be heard from the seven golden 
candlesticks : 

" To the angel of the Church in Philadelphia write, Behold, I have set 
before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. 

" Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of m.y God, and 
he shall go no more out. And I will write upon him the name of my God, 
which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of Heaven from my God, 
and I will write upon him my new name.". 

To the hundreds of thousands of Christian people who 
enjoyed for a brief season the glories of the Church of New 
York and of the Church of Philadelphia, we would make an 
appeal. 

You had an insight there into spiritual power ; you obtained 
a glimpse of the force there is in common prayer and praise, 
in a common Spirit, a common Gospel, and a common name ; 
and you long for such a revival all the time ; a revival that 
will begin and never end ; a revival that will last three hun- 
dred and sixty-five days in every year ; a revival that will 
spread into every nook and corner of this land, and over all 
the lands, and bear down the idols and the false religions, and 
never cease till " the earth shall be filled with the knowledge 
of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Yes. 
But the Holy Spirit , was with you all those weeks that you 
were together as the Church of New York and the Church of 
Philadelphia. He never left you a moment. He would have 
stayed with you till now. Why did you leave Him and His 



40 Our Divisions Grieve the Holy Spirit.- 

Church, and go back into your divisions ? You laid down 
your sects at the doors of the Hippodrome and the Depot. 
What did you take them up again for ? 

Bishop Foster, at a recent meeting of the Pittsburgh Confer- 
ence, propounded the question : '* Why is the world not con- 
verted ? " and then suggested, as the answer, " Because the 
Church does not want it to be." 



CHAPTER III. 
DIVISIONS HURT THE FOREIGN FIELD. 

" Bind Thy people, Lord, in union 

With the seven-fold cord of love ; 
Breathe a spirit of communion 

With the glorious hosts above. 
Let Thy work be seen progressing, 

Bow each heart and bend each knee ; 
Till the world, Thy truth possessing, 

Celebrates its jubilee." 

WHAT IS THE TROUBLE? 

Six and fifty generations of men have been swept into eter- 
nity since Jesus entrusted His Gospel to Christian hands for 
them, and yet three-fourths of our race are without it. What 
is the trouble ? This day all the world is ready for us. China, 
with a third of mankind, is accessible to its farthest interior ; 
Japan, with a population equal to our own, has thrown down 
its barriers and come to us for instruction. The Mussulman 
can prevent no missions we choose to establish. Africa has 
been opened, and steamboats plow its central lakes, ready to 
carry our Evangelists and Bibles. Italy, Mexico, Spain, and 
Brazil are unclosed. The Gospel preacher need fear neither 
the State nor the Inquisition. In all her history the Church 
has had no such chance as at this hour. Every morning paper 
brings news of some fresh opening in the heathen world for 
our efforts, and yet the mass of Christians are supine before 
the grand opportunity. As Spurgeon says, " A few cheese- 
parings and candle-ends are about all we give to missions." 
It is only here and there that one devotes himself to that 
mighty work which is the first and principal duty of the 
whole Church. When Livingstone told an African chief the 
story of the Cross, the latter replied, " How long have you 
known this?" "Oh," said the traveler, '* my fathers knew 
it." " Then why," said the chief, " did they not come and 

(40 



42 Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field, 

tell us about it?" And to that Livingstone had nothing 
to say. 

Something chills the ardor of the Church. It is her division. 
Each sect has its own missionaries and its own projects ; it 
tells what our Zion is doing, and appeals for our stations. 
Thoughtful believers lose interest and put in the plate their 
pennies. Ex-President John Adams, when asked to give for 
foreign missions, said : " Here are four or five churches of 
different denominations in our little village, whose ministers 
and members can not commune or worship together, nor 
scarcely speak to each other ; go and convert them to Chris- 
tianity first, and then talk about sending the Gospel abroad." 
That is how it strikes the masses. What is the use, say they, 
of ministers preaching love to Hottentots 5,000 miles away, 
when they show none for each other here ? 

A gentleman made a public offer, a few years ago, of three 
thousand dollars, if the various denominational Boards would 
consolidate into one Union Missionary Society, and so remove 
this offence. The sectarian papers were indignant at the offer, 
and denied that our divisions were stumbling-blocks to mis- 
sionary work. The New York Evangelist said : 

" We claim that the diversity of sects and of well-conducted and com- 
pact organizations, instead of being a hindrance to, is conducive of the 
highest success of missions." 

This brought up the issue squarely, and we were interested 
in collecting evidence upon it. 

TESTIMONY OF MISSIONARIES. 

Let us first hear the missionaries themselves. As we read 
the lives of Schwartz and Heber and Duff, we find that they 
denounced mere sectarian effort. The first missionaries who 
went from America, Newell and Judson and Gordon Hall and 
Nott and Rice, whatever their private views, never thought 
of going to represent a denomination. They went as dele- 
gated by the Christians of America. "- 1 never," said Dr. 
Livingstone, ''' as a missionary felt myself to be either Presby- 
terian, Episcopalian, or Independent, or called upon in any 
way to love one denomination more than another." Among 
millions of idolaters little questions between brethren fade out 
of sight. The contrast between the worst form of Christianity 



Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field, 43 

and the best form of heathenism is so great that any Chris- 
tian's aid is welcomed. Lord Macaulay, on his return from 
India, said : '' He had Hved too long in a country where peo- 
ple worship cows, to think much about the difference between 
Christians and Christians." 

If any go with partisan zeal, they lose it on the foreign 
field. Two passengers on a vessel were enemies ; as they 
were standing on the deck one day, a man fell into the sea ; 
and both laid hold of a plank, and by united strength hove it 
overboard, and the man was saved ; whereupon they shook 
hands, and their enmity was gone. So with the missionaries ; 
in labors for the perishing their differences vanish. 

Dr. Poor tells of a missionary meeting in Ceylon : There 
were twelve brethren, in an upper room, and the darkness of 
heathenism all around. The number and the circumstances 
called to mind the upper chamber in Jerusalem and the break- 
ing of bread there, and so they proposed to eat the Lord's 
Supper together. But lo ! one was a Baptist. He became 
at once embarrassed and greatly agitated ; he thought a few 
moments, and then, says Dr. Poor, ''down went the barrier!''' 
So it happens that there is far more comity and co-operation 
among the missionaries than among those who send them ; 
they rejoice in each other's success, and refuse to build on 
each other's foundations or to disturb in the heathen mind 
each other's prestige. 

The strongest appeals for our union come from the foreign 
missionaries. Hear them. Miss Rankin, while missionary at 
Monterey, Mexico, wrote : 

" A united front can only compete successfully with such a formidable 
foe as the Romish Church. Unity is the boasted bulwark of the Papacy, 
and is it not highly important that Protestantism — the only true religion — 
should assume the same aspect in the deadly encounter with this awful foe 
of God and man ? " 

The Rev. Henry C. Riley, from the City of Mexico, wrote : 

" The clash of contending societies would give the Romanists their favor- 
ite weapon — namely, the taunt of the distracting divisions among Prot- 
estants." 

The Rev. P. N. Gilbert, after eleven years' experience in 
Peru and Chili, wrote : 

" We are agreed in the opinion that a combined Protestant effort would 
be more successful than any denominational one could hope to be." 



44 Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 

The Rev. Dr. Van Nest, President of the EvangeHzation 
Committee of the Free Church of Italy, says : 

'' It is most important in the face of Popery that we Protestants should 
present a united front, and it would be a great misfortune to Italy to have 
our several denominations entering the field with various and conflicting 
agencies. However divided may be the sources of charity at home, let 
them flow into one Board and come ihto union on the mission-field." 

The Rev. M. D. Kalopothakes, writing from Athens, Greece, 
says : 

" I am a thorough Presbyterian in principle, but if I should present my- 
self under a denominational name, I would at once lose half my influence." 

A professor in the college at Yeddo, writes thus to his Chris- 
tian brethren in America : 

" I like this union idea. My dislike of sects is ripening into contempt. 
How ridiculous to transplant our lines of difference to Japan and China. 
As to China, the state of things there is pitiful. Each sect has its own 
peculiar phrases, ritual, books, and exclusiveness translated into Chinese to 
the perplexity and derision of the heathen. I hope Japan may be saved 
from the isms. I almost lose heart when I see the divisions of Christians ; 
and especially when they transmit them like a hereditary disease to the 
heathen. Pray for Christ's Christianity to bless Japan." 

TESTIMONY OF HEATHEN. 

The heathen also have opinions on this subject. We had a 
specimen of them in the early missionary history of our own 
country. A Rev. Mr. Cam once went as a n;issionary from 
the New England settlements to the Seneca Indians. Find- 
ing them assembled in council at Buffalo Creek in New York, 
he said to them : 

"Brethren, I am come to enlighten your minds, and to instruct you 
how to worship the Great Spirit, agreeable to His will, and to preach to 
you the Gospel of his Son, Jesus Christ. There is but one way to serve 
God, and if you do not embrace the right way you can not be happy here- 
after." 

To these remarks, history says, they made the following 
reply : 

" Brother, we understand your religion is written in a book. You say 
there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there be 
but one religion, why do white people differ so much about it ? Why not 
all agree, as you can all read the book } Brother, we do not understand 
these things. We also have a religion, which was given to our forefathers. 
It teaches us to love one another and to be united. We never quarrel 
about religion." 



Divisions Hurt the Foreigji Field. 45 

We have never learned what Mr. Cam said to this, and 
indeed it is not very clear what there was he could say. 

Going into a piano-store a while ago, we were confused with 
the din of half a dozen instruments which they were tuning 
and trying in different parts of the room ; any one would 
have made delightful music, but more than one spoiled it all. 
The Gospel would sound sweetly to the oppressed heart of 
heathendom, but several gospels at once is quite another 
thing. 

Dr. Doellinger, head of the Reformed Catholics in Europe, 
in giving an account of the comparative failure of Protestant 
missions, says : 

" As to the Protestant missions, the friends of these say that they have 
converted but a very inconsiderable fraction of the great body of heathens, 
and that these are not really converted, but for the most part are simply 
prepared for perfect conversion, and thai if we take the numerical result as 
the standard of value of these institutions and undertakings, the decision 
concerning missions in general would be unfavorable. Our astonishment 
decreases when we perceive in the reports and letters of missionaries and 
travelers, how European Christians carry with them everywhere their 
schisms and spirit of division, as, for example, in East India, twenty dif- 
ferent churches and confessions are laboring to convert the Hindoos, each 
striving at the same time to injure the others, and to draw away their 
proselytes from them. As it is there, so' it is elsewhere ; so that Chris- 
tianity comes to the intelligent heathen in the repulsive form of schism and 
uncertainty." 

If we read that paragraph between the lines, we may see 
not only why our chariot-wheels drag in India, but also why 
we failed with these Reformers themselves. When Doellinger 
and his friends left the Papacy, they came straight toward us ; 
but arriving in sight of Protestantism, they stopped short, and 
have never moved an inch further. Driven from Rome by its 
pretensions to infallibility, they recoiled equally from our 
*' repulsive form of schism and uncertainty." 

This is the first thing that strikes the educated Moslem, or 
Brahmin, or disciple of Confucius. Being divided, we can not 
approach them with decision and authority, but only as 
debaters, debating with each other and debating with them ; 
and everybody knows that is not the tone of one who comes 
from God. So, from every mosque and pagoda we are 
elbowed away with the words : " Better agree among your- 
selves as to the truth before you come to teach it to us." 



4-6 Divisions Hurt the Foreigii Field, 

Thomson, in his ''Ten Years' Travel in Indo-China," 
says : 

" One of the late king's of Siam wrote a series of letters in the Bangkok 
Recorder in favor of Buddhism. His style of argument may be seen from 
the following extract : 

" ' Christians are disagreed among themselves as to what their creed 
should be. There was only one Christ, and there are a great many dif- 
ferent sects — the broadest differences existing between Roman Catholic 
and Reformed Churches, while narrower shades of faith divide the Prot- 
estant ranks ' 

" The king therefore sums up his case by the very natural inquiry as to 
how he was to determine which sect was right." 

This is our weak point, and our heathen opponents are quite 
sharp enough to see it. The use made of it is seen from a 
book lately published in Yokohama, by Jasui Chiuhei, an 
eminent Japanese scholar. It is an elaborate attack upon the 
Bible and the Christian religion. The author gives his reasons 
for the work in the following preface : 

" Those of our countrv^men who admire the marvelous acts and skill of 
Western nations have, without exception, carried their admiration as far 
as believing in the religicn of Jesus, and some there are of these who are for 
extending this religion throughout the country, which is a great evil. As 
for that, the errors of the religion of Jesus are, of course, so palpable that 
they do not require to be exposed ; but the doctrines of this religion are 
so clever, plausible, and insinuating that men are apt to be led astray by 
them. Should these, therefore, be left unrefuted on the ground that they 
need no refutation, the followers of this religion will increase in strength 
and influence more and more, until at last they will lead the whole nation 
with them, and cause them to submit to their doctrine ; and then there will 
be no putting a stop to its power. No time, then, must be lost in exposing 
the falseness of this religion." 

After criticising the account of the Flood, the doctrines of 
the Atonement and Resurrection, and the teachings of Jesus 
as to masters and servants, and parents and children, he 
delivers his crushing charge in these words : 

" I have heard that the followers of this religion in Western countries 
have become divided into two parties — the old and the new ; that in America 
they have become divided into twenty-five different sects, and that these are 
all at variance with each other, and will none of them give in on a single 
point. I have also been given to understand, that when people quarrel 
on any other cause than religion, overtures for a reconciliation from one 
party to another are accepted, but that if parties are opposed in religious 
strife, no submission is accepted by either adversary from his opponent, and 
no quarter being given, one or the other is exterminated. Now religion 



Divisions Httrt the Foreign Field. 47 

secures the proper government of nations, and causes tranquillity to reign 
in the world ; but nowadays religion produces strife, and people fighting 
for their respective beliefs, kill and end by exterminating one another. How 
can this be called religion ? These twenty-five sects (which exist in Amer- 
ica) all equally have Jesus as their basis. The differences on account of 
which they quarrel must be very slight ; but still they kill each other, and 
give no quarter. Buddhism is what these Christians call a worship of im- 
ages, and they wish to attack it and destroy it altogether. Again, there is 
the Shinto religion, the strength of which is small, but the sects of this 
religion are all founded on the worship of the gods. If these three religions 
be carried on together, there will be no putting an end to the strife which 
will ensue." 

Such is the style of reading which, thanks to our sects, is 
furnished the Japanese. 

HEATHEN VISITORS. 

The impression we make upon the heathen who come to 
our shores is a matter of immense moment ; far more impor- 
tant than the preaching of missionaries. The English Bishop 
of Carlisle says : 

" Hindoos, Parsees, and Mohammedans come and see us for themselves, 
and the future of the kingdom of Christ depends, humanly speaking, very 
much upon what they see when they visit our shores. One would wish 
them to go back in the same state of mind as the Queen of the South when 
she went back from visiting Solomon ; they ought to go back almost, if 
not quite, persuaded to be Christians. If England was what she ought to 
be — still more, if Christendom was what she ought to be — missionary work, 
so far as India is concerned, might be at an end ; the natives would be their 
own missionaries. The spiritual influences conveyed by the constant passing 
and repassing of Hindoos and Enghshmen between one country and the 
other ought to introduce the Gospel into India with more effect than any 
society can produce." 

What effect, then, do we have upon the idolaters who come 
to see Christianity upon its own soil ? The eminent Hindoo 
reformer, Chunder Sen, who visited Great Britain a few years 
ago, drew a mortifying picture of the English sects, each hold- 
ing out to him a puny hand, and assuring him that it alone 
had the right to the title of Christian. " If I wanted to be- 
come a Christian," said he, "■ I could not, for they say so 
many different things that I do not know which of all these 
sects to take up with ! " 

But note especially how we have impressed the Japanese. 
Secluded for ages in their sea-girt home, these people changed 



48 Divisions Htcrt the Foreig7i Field. 

their policy a few years ago and determined to take part in 
the progress of the times. For this purpose, in the year 1872 
they sent a committee of eminent men across the Pacific to 
study into our Christian civilization. These men came not for 
display or political design, but to investigate. " We have 
come for enlightenment," said Iwakura, the ambassador-in- 
chief, when presented with his companions to the House of 
Representatives in Washington. And accordingly, among us 
they went, exploring and sifting, right and left. Wide-awake 
and intelligent, they roamed through our woolen mills, loco- 
motive works, type-foundries, press-rooms, and public schools, 
asking questions at every turn, determined to understand what 
they saw. 

Distinguished foreign visitors usually see but the outside. 
Taken in hand by our Common Councils, they are whirled 
through Broadway and Chestnut Street, and entertained with 
dinners and shows. The Czar Nicholas made a flying visit to 
the Pope a few years ago, and the day the imperial procession 
passed through the streets the beggars were all shut within 
doors. So we often succeed in hiding from our foreign guests 
the corruptions that are eating out the heart of the State and 
the feuds that are rending the soul of our religion. But we 
could not do it in this instance. These Japanese nobles were, 
too thorough for any ruse of that sort. And our religion was 
one of the main things they came to examine. Two hundred 
years ago, the Japanese, disgusted with Popery, tossed the 
Jesuits off from a rock, and shut their doors against all foreign 
missionaries ; but understanding that we had a religion that 
was different, they came to study it. They were the more 
anxious about this, because their ancient faith was on the 
decline. During the past six years upward of six hundred 
temples of idolatry had been turned into stores and dwelling- 
houses. The Empire was ready for a new religion. It was an 
occasion of solemn interest to the cause of Christ. Forty mil- 
lions of Mongolians would be influenced by the report of this 
committee. No such chance for the Gospel had occurred 
since the primitive ages. 

And what ? They found Christianity not in the dignified 
position of a thing proved, but in the midst of discussion and 
conflict ; they found discordant sects striving for the mastery 
and arguing against each other from the same Bible. The 



Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 49 

Japanese went home. Iwakura became Junior Prime Minis- 
ter of the Empire. He was evidently pleased with us, for he 
introduced among his people many of our arts and customs, 
and he sent two of his sons here to be educated. But our 
religion — what of that ? The Japanese Government soon 
after issued this edict : 

" In consequence of the many conflicting theories on matters of faith, 
' the existing religion shall continue to be respected until the truth of some 
other religion shall have been conclusively established.' " 

That was the result. We lost the opportunity through our 
divisions. They adopted our engines and elevators, but left 
our religion behind, not wishing to transfer our contentions 
to their peaceful shores ! 

This was the decision of men not prejudiced against us, but 
prejudiced for us ; men who would rather have adopted our 
religion than not. They concluded Christianity to be an in- 
volved and complicated affair, suitable for scholars, but not 
for the common people. One of them gave it as his opinion 
that their young students should be educated in science first, 
and then they might study Christianity with advantage. Think 
of that. Better to conquer the enigmas of the Calculus, be- 
fore reading of the Good Samaritan ; to study the mysteries 
of the telegraph, before learning of the Cross ! Where did 
the Japanese get such an idea? It was from the wordy con- 
fusion of our catechisms and sects. 

This is shown by a letter which one of the young Japanese 
scholars, sent here to be educated, wrote to his teacher on the 
subject. The letter was sent by the teacher to the Co7igrcga- 
tionalist, and was published in that paper. Its English is 
rather mixed, but its point is clear, and cuts into our denomi- 
nations like a rapier. It reads as follows : 

" I take the liberty of writing to you about the Christian of the United 
States. In this country there are many kinds or sects of Christianity, and 
all these churches are different custom, or ceremony of prayer, and some 
selfishness, that is, some people says, I believe only one apostolic church for 
remission of sin or salvation. Others says, I believe only one baptism church 
for the remission of sin, and every sect has its own selfishness. If one 
church can give remission of sin, then what shall other sect of church do ? I 
guess all these different churches have quite proud for every its own sect, 
and selfishness, if only, for instance, one apostolic church can give salvation, 
then another baptism or Congregational churches are next door to heathen 
Japanese. I can not comprehend all their different sects, why they made 
4 



50 Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 

different branches of the reHgion, I like to know before I become a mis- 
sionary why they made such different sects, for if I can not get salvation 
when I die, it is very solemn joke to become a Christian." 

And yet, in the face of testimonies like these, our sectarian 
papers have the temerity to tell the American people that '' the 
diversity of sects, instead of being a hindrance to, is conducive 
of the highest success of missions ! " 

But let us consider the working of our sectarian system in 
particular countries of the Foreign Field. 

MEXICO. 

For three hundred years after the Spanish conquest of 
Mexico, the Roman Catholics fortified themselves throughout 
this beautiful land, filling it with magnificent stone cathedrals, 
convents, and colleges, and guarding them by the Inquisition. 
In the early part of this century, however, a Liberal Repub- 
lican party arose, which grew so rapidly that in 1821 it freed 
Mexico from Spain, and in 1857 succeeded in suppressing the 
convents, and freeing it from the political power of the Pope. 
To regain their supremacy, the priests brought about the 
French intervention during our Civil war, and taking advan- 
tage of the confusion, the British and Foreign Bible Society 
sent an agent into Mexico with a large supply of Bibles. 
These Bibles were circulated by a converted Romish priest, 
named Francisco Aguilar, and were gladly read by thousands ; 
and then Aguilar, with a few laymen, undertook the establish- 
ment of a pure Christian Church, founded upon the Word 
of God. 

President Juarez, seeing the importance of an independent 
Mexican Church as his ally, assigned for its. use several capa- 
cious sanctuaries. In these the reformers preached, and the 
movement gained strength. Persecution arose; Papal mobs 
attacked the congregations; the dwellings of the converts 
were burned, and several were murdered. Aguilar stood faith- 
fully by his flock, preaching Christ and Him crucified, and 
conducting service with selections from the English Prayer- 
book and with extempore prayer. The church was known as 
"The Church of Jesus in the City of Mexico." It had noth- 
ing to do with any Church abroad, and received no aid from 
abroad. Indeed, up to this time, hardly a Christian outside 



Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 51 

of Mexico knew anything about it. It was a united Gospel 
Church growing up directly and only from the Bible. 

Worn out with labor, Aguilar died, entrusting the work 
to a converted business man, Prudencio Hernandez. He 
proved an able manager, and the movement so rapidly in- 
creased as to attract the attention of the Protestants of the 
United States ; whereupon the American and Foreign Chris- 
tian Union, an undenominational Society, organized to work 
among the Romanists, sent men and means to its aid. It was 
Protestant Christians here helping the Protestant Christians 
of our sister Republic. The Mexican Christians received our 
missionaries with joy. Our divisions were kept out of sight, 
our oneness appeared, and lo ! a mighty triumph of the Gos- 
pel ! Thousands were converted. The movement spread to 
other Mexican cities. Within three years fifty-six congrega- 
tions were organized. The most active workers were the con- 
verted Romish priests. The whole country seemed ready for 
a Gospel revolution. In 1872, the Rev. Dr. Ellinwood, Secre- 
tary of the Presbyterian Missionary Board, made this public 
statement : 

" A deep and truly religious awakening is in progress at the Mexican 
capital. The American and Foreign Christian Union, though not long in 
the field, have already established a weekly religious paper, and gathered 
forty (soon after fifty-six) congregations. Four converted Catholic priests 
are laboring with great zeal and success among their countrymen ; the 
people hear them with eagerness, and converts are rapidly increasing. 
American residents in Mexico give assurance that the readiness of the 
people to receive evangelical truth is so remarkable, as to render this one 
of the most promising fields of usefulness in the world. In no country 
have as yet great results followed so small an outlay of effort." 

But alas! this very success aroused the jealousy of our de- 
nominations. The Church of Mexico did not need them or 
ask for them. The movement was an outpouring of the Holy 
Spirit, bringing all hearts together on the simple basis of the 
Word of God ; and Popery fell before it because of its union 
character. Every consideration demanded that the sects 
should let it alone. But our selfish partisans could not keep 
their hands away. Against a thousand protests, they broke 
into the field one after another, and set up their rival schisms. 
Confusion followed. The people, perplexed by these different 
names and questions, lost their interest ; the American and 
Foreign Christian Union was withdrawn ; the Jesuits taking 



52 Divisions Hitrt the Foreign Field, 

heart, fairly shook with laughter and delight ; and that was 
the end. From that day the world has heard nothing more 
of the revival in Mexico. 

ITALY. 

This most interesting field for evangelical labor was fully 
opened in 1869, when Victor Emmanuel entered the city of 
Rome through a breach in the walls at Porta Pia. The civil 
power of the Popedom was annihilated, religious liberty was 
decreed, and the education of the masses begun. 

There was an intense desire among Protestants in Germany, 
England, and America that the Gospel should be proclaimed 
with united voice in the stronghold of the apostasy. Ever 
since the Reformation the Papacy has been taunting us with 
our divisions ; its chief indictment is the old one of Bossuet : 
'' They are divided — they are divided." We may excuse this 
fact among ourselves, but not in these old Catholic lands, 
where unity has always been held as a mark of the true 
Church. Now, then, it was felt, was the time to show that 
we were one in heart, and could act together if necessary. A 
more determined effort to unite was, therefore, made at this 
time than ever we made before. 

Independent congregations under the auspices of the Amer- 
ican and Foreign Christian Union and the Evangelical Conti- 
nental Society of London, had been started in various places, 
and in June, 1870, delegates from thirty-three of these congre- 
gations met at Milan, and formed a union on the basis of a 
common creed, and constituted the " Free Christian Church 
of Italy." Clergymen and laymen of all denominations were 
in the movement. In April, 1872, the American Christians in 
Rome organized a Church composed of Baptists, Congrega- 
tionalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and oth- 
ers, and in the afternoon "of the same day held a prayer-meet- 
ing of especial harmony and inspiration. A burst of approval 
came up from every Gospel land for this happy movement. 

Never did enterprise more earnestly begin, never did one 
more signally fail. Instead of being concealed, our divisions 
have been more shamelessly exposed in the city of Rome 
than anywhere else. Elbowing aside the union attempts, the 
sects rushed in pell-mell, eager for a foothold in this coveted 
land ; they wrangled so openly that Pius IX. actually rebuked 



Divisions Hurt the Foreig7i Field. 53 

them from the Vatican ; and the Italians, who had begun to 
listen to the Gospel, turned away generally to spiritualism 
and infidelity. 

In his address at Princeton, N. J., as reported in the N'ew 
York Observer^ May 16, 1872, the great Protestant Italian re- 
former, Gavazzi, said : 

"When Germany, Switzerland, England, and America heard that the 
door was open for sending the Gospel into Italy, they sent their agents 
with the special commission to preach Christ only, and leave the Italians 
free to choose what form of Christianity they might prefer. These agents, 
however, when they found favor with the people, tried to estabHsh different 
denominations, and here was the trouble. 

" The Gospel itself was new to the people, and when it was presented 
under many forms, they could not tell which was the best form, or why 
there were so many, and were afraid to join themselves to any. Thus the 
Italians were divided into sects before they were united to Christ. Let me 
say frankly, it was a great wrong done to the Italians. These parties were 
not friendly for many years, and in Piedmont now you can see the conse- 
quences in unhealthy churches, living a consumptive life, and dying a con- 
sumptive death." 

Speaking of the same thing, the Philadelphia Presbyterian 
said : 

" It is no longer a secret that some of the evangelistic labors undertaken 
in Italy, and especially in the city of Rome, are sad and disheartening fail- 
ures. They are worse than simple failures, for they have created deep 
prejudice against all evangelistic labor. James M. Bruce affirms very decid- 
edly his belief that evangelization would have been much further advanced 
in the Roman States if no foreign workers had ever come there. And he 
is especially grieved that they have come, because the chief result of their 
coming has been to hinder the work of the Vaudois, who were the first in 
Rome, and who had the very best qualifications for the work to be done 
there, and in the rest of Italy. The American Baptists have had sore divis- 
ions among themselves, and the scandals in Rome occasioned by the squab- 
bles of sectarian missionaries are most deplorable." 

Let us turn aside a moment and consider what ought to 
have been done in this case. 

It is plain that our efforts for Italy should have been made 
through the Waldenses. These people, whose ancestors had 
probably shaken hands with one or two of the apostles, had 
kept the light of primitive Christianity burning in their moun- 
tain churches all through the Dark Ages. They preached the 
true Gospel, and suffered for it, long before Luther, and long 
before even Huss and Jerome of Prague, the Reformers be- 



54 Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field, 

fore the Reformation. The Waldenses are pure, devout, ortho- 
dox believers ; and they are Italians ; they speak the language ; 
they are the ones who should have gone forward in this move- 
ment. And they should have gone forward, and we should 
have aided them to build, not Waldensian or Presbyterian 
churches, but the Church of Milan, and the Church of Flor- 
ence, and the Church of Rome, and the Church of Naples, on 
the simple basis of full belief in the Word of God. Such a 
movement would have been according to Scripture, and it 
would not have failed. 

The Free Church of Italy, with the noblest aspirations for 
union, made at the start some serious mistakes, over which 
we well may ponder, (i) The name. — According to the Bible 
there can be no Church of Italy, but a church at each town 
or neighborhood in Italy. (2) It started with a creed. — Prot- 
estants can never unite on any creed but the whole and entire 
Bible ; and Romanists will never give up their assumed infal- 
libility to anything but what is positively and divinely infalli- 
ble. (3) It started as an association of independent congrega- 
tions. — Nothing is said in Scripture of the independence of 
congregations. On the Bible plan, no congregation can be 
independent of its neighboring congregations. All the believ- 
ers, and all the congregations comprising the Church of a 
place, are under the Gospel free, each one to adopt their own 
worship and opinions ; but they are not independent of each 
other. They are all one Family. They all belong to their 
one church and to each other, and are in duty bound to act 
as one church in matters of discipline and in defending the 
Faith once delivered to the saints. 

Overlooking these plain principles of the New Testament, 
the Free Church gradually drifted into a mere Congregational 
sect ; the Waldenses operated as distinctly Presbyterians ; the 
other sects pushed themselves in alongside — 

" The Spirit, like some peaceful dove 
Fled from the realms of noise and strife," 

and the dark ages settled down again over Italy. 

INDIA. 

The missionaries in India having been longer in the field 
than those of almost any other country, have become impressed 
with the absolute necessity of union, and have done more to 



Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 55 

practically bring it about than perhaps any other body of 
men in the world. They have been engaged from the first in 
a double fight with the idolatry before them, and the secta- 
rianism behind them. What they have accomplished may be 
seen from the following official paper recently presented to 
the British Parliament : 

" The large body of European and American missionaries settled in 
India, bring their various moral influences to bear upon the country with 
the greater force, because they act together, with a compactness which is 
but little understood. Though belonging to various denominations of Chris- 
tians, yet from the nature of their work, their isolated position and their 
long experience, they have been led to think rather of the numerous ques- 
tions on which they agree than of those on which they differ, and they 
co-operate heartily together. Localities are divided among them by friendly 
arrangements, and with few exceptions it is a fixed rule among them that 
they will not interfere with each other's converts and each other's spheres 
of duty. School-books, translations of the Scriptures, and religious works, 
prepared by various missions, are used in common ; and helps and im- 
provements secured by one mission are freely placed at the command of all. 
The large body of missionaries resident in each of the presidency towns 
form missionary conferences, hold periodic meetings, and act together on 
public matters. They have frequently addressed the Indian Government 
on important social questions, involving the welfare of the native commu- 
nity, and have suggested valuable improvements in existing laws. During 
the past twenty years, on five occasions, general conferences have been held 
for mutual consultation respecting their missionary work." 

But they have gone beyond this. At a meeting of the Lo- 
diana Mission in 1858, they projected a plan to bring into 
harmony all believers everywhere ; and the next year they 
sent an invitation abroad for us to spend the first week in every 
year together around the Mercy-seat. Since the Saviour's 
dying prayer no words have done so much for union as that 
touching appeal. Their object may be seen in the following 
circular, which the same missionaries sent out in the year 
1872 : 

"The Synod of India 

'*To God's people throughout the World: 
" Dear Brethren : — Thirteen years ago, some of our number, the mem- 
bers of the Lodiana Mission, sent an invitation to the people of God in all 
lands, to unite in observing a Week of Prayer for a universal outpouring 
of the Holy Spirit. It is well remembered how the heart of the Christian 
world responded to this invitation. The movement was acknowledged and 
has been eminently blessed of God. Year after year most precious revivals 
have followed the Week of Prayer. One of its most blessed fruits has been 



56 Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 

a clearer, fuller, and more loving recognition of the unity of all believers in 
Christ, and a growing desire among them to co-operate in the work of the 
Lord, and to draw nearer to each other in the bonds of Christian fellowship. 
We rejoice to see in this not only an effect of the Spirit's presence, but also 
a pledge that this same Spirit shall be poured out in still richer measure ; 
for we have the promise where brethren dwell together in unity, there He 
is present with His most fragrant and refreshing gifts. May we not rejoice 
m this also as the beginning of the answer to our Saviour's prayer : ' That 
they all may be one ; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that 
they also may be one in Us ; that the world may beUeve that Thou hast 
sent Me.' 

"Beheving that it is the delightful duty and privilege of every one who 
has the Spirit of Christ to pray and labor for that object which was last on 
the Saviour's heart before the hour of His agony had come, and the prin- 
cipal subject of His last affecting prayer with His disciples ; and believing 
this unity of brethren to be the most eminent means of securing the com- 
forting, sanctifying, and strengthening presence of the Holy Spirit, and the 
best means of defeating the enemies of Christ and convincing the world of 
His Divine mission, we would earnestly mvzte all Christians throughout 
the world to wiite on the first day of the Week of Prayer, from year to 
year, in beseeching the Lord for the speedy maiiifestation of the union 
of God' s people for which Christ prayed." 

We now come to a remarkable fact. We all know that the 
object of our brethren in India, in these plans and appeals, is 
our union ; we know the disastrous effects our divisions will 
have upon the native mind ; for a score of years we have 
observed this Week of Prayer, and been so blessed that we 
look forward to it as our especial season of spiritual refresh- 
ment and revival, and yet no effort is made to accomplish the 
desire of its projectors. Steadily we meet at the Week of 
Prayer, and steadily we keep on as sectarians. We neither 
come out from our partisan lines at home, or withdraw our 
partisan influence from India ! 

Let us clearly understand — if our divisions continue, the 
missions in India will be failures ; collision is inevitable ; it is 
only a question of time. The missionaries know this ; they 
know that their courtesies and friendly arrangements are thin 
barriers against the sectarian selfishness swelling up around 
them ; and that when controversy does break into their fields, 
they may as well pack up and come home, their usefulness is 
over. Their agony for our union is not mere sentiment there- 
fore ; it is outcry against a mortal danger. 

The waters of strife are already trickling through the dam. 
There lies before us as we write, a printed report from India 



Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field, 57 

of a sectarian dispute already begun. In the year 1852, a few 
pious Presbyterians went to Western India, and started a mis- 
sion in the Httle city of Kolapoor, containing 38,000 inhabit- 
ants. It was in the midst of an unbroken waste of heathen- 
ism, the most bigoted and superstitious population in all India. 
After persevering toil, converts began to reward their efforts. 
Eighteen years pass by, and one Douglas, an Episcopal bishop, 
living at Bombay, visits Kolapoor, finds there a native church, 
a flourishing female school, several mission houses, and other 
evidences of active and successful work, and proposes to buy 
them out ! This being declined, he next proceeds to set up a 
rival Episcopal mission alongside of them. Several heathen 
converts are induced to leave the Presbyterian mission and go 
over to the other; trouble and agitation ensue; and this 
printed controversy before us is the result. 

The Episcopal bishop says : " If as a Church we (Episco- 
palians) had done our duty to the heathen, these places 
(Kolapoor, Poona, Ahmednuggur, etc.) would long ago have 
been occupied by us, and the fact that others have under- 
taken a work which we have neglected does not warrant our 
continued failure in the performance of a duty which, above 
all, belongs to us." In answer, the Rev. Mr. Wilder, head of 
the Presbyterian Mission, asks 'why, passing by cities ten 
times the size, the bishop had planted his station at Kola- 
poor ? He mentions the wide wastes around them wholly 
unoccupied — to the southward, immense populations without 
the Gospel ; to the eastward, the vast territory of Nizam, with 
its many millions of idolaters, without a missionary ; and 
northward, the wide regions of Central India unoccupied 
except at two or three points. He then speaks of the confu- 
sion among the converts caused by the distribution of prayer- 
books, and the agitation among them of questions of church 
government and ritual ; he refers to efforts made to proselyte 
among his flock by offers of money, and says : 

" We know v/e could cope with you, retain our own converts, and draw 
off yours, if we would overbid you ; but this would demorahze the converts 
and involve us in the same wrong-doing we deprecate." " That one mission 
can invade another in such a small city without hindering its work, is simply 
impossible. Serious damage to. the cause of Christ from such intrusion is 
inevitable." 

Talk of the wide wastes of heathenism ; there are no wastes 
wide enough for two of our sects. 



^S Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 

Space forbids us to ^o over the whole field. We must pass 
by Amoy, where the American Reformed and the English 
United Presbyterians were successfully united in joint work 
by the devoted Burns against the wishes of the mission boards 
at home. We must pass by the rest of China, where the 
Jesuits have secured immense properties ; where they are buy- 
ing thousands of children and educating them for the priest- 
hood ; where, according to the statement of a recent traveler, 
" ninety per cent, of the missionary effort is by the Roman 
CathoHcs ; " where, according to Sir John Bowring, '' Romanism 
stands a fair chance of obtaining possessicn of the vast Em- 
pire ; " and where we are either doing nothing, or else, as in 
Shanghai, destroying each other with ten rival missionary 
organizations. We must pass by these and close with 

JAPAN. 

As late as 1870 the profession of Christianity in Japan was 
prohibited under penalty of death; and in January of that 
year over three thousand native converts, mostly Roman 
Catholics, were exiled by the Governor of Nagasaki to distant 
islands to live in forests and work in mines. But soon after, 
by a revolution that surprised the world, the gates of the em- 
pire were thrown open and toleration granted to all religions. 

Soon there were a number of Protestant converts, and these, 
without regard to sect, organized in May, 1872, a church in 
Yokohama, called '^ The First Christian Church of Japan.'* 
In September, 1872, a missionary convention was held in 
Yokohama, attended by every Protestant missionary in Japan, 
except an English Episcopalian. It agreed that the Japanese 
Christians were the only ones scripturally competent to form 
native churches ; that their pastors should be Japanese, and 
that the basis of these churches should be that of the apos- 
tolic days before the separation of sects. '' We will," they 
resolved, '' use our influence to secure, as far as possible, 
identity of name and organization in the native churches — 
that name being as catholic as the Church of Christ." The 
future was bright. There was hope that in Japan, Christians 
could forget their divisions and present a solid front against 
paganism. 

But when the missionaries wrote home telling what they 
had done, they met a rebuke. The two sects among us most 



Divisions Hurt the Fo feign Field, 59 

concerned were the Dutch Reformed and the Presbyterian. 
They called the secretaries of their Boards together to agree 
upon a policy as to this union movement. The secretaries 
decided that union churches were to be vigorously discour- 
aged. Then the sects each took up the matter. The Dutch 
Reformed Board of Missions vetoed the action of its mission- 
aries and sent them a communication to this effect : — The 
Board of Missions of the Reformed Church of America had 
expended over $80,000 on missions in Japan. After all this 
outlay, they expected fruit not only for God, but for their 
denomination. The Japanese Christians should be fed oil 
the Heidelberp; catechisms and standards of the Reformed 
Church. The union movement was unsound and would fail. 
The native Church must be reorganized and made a Reformed 
Church. — The missionaries, however, replying that they knew 
the condition of things in Japan, the injury that would be 
done by sectarianism, and that they proposed to work for 
Christianity rather than sect, they were finally, under this 
protest, allowed to go on and try the experiment of a Church 
of Christ. 

As to the Presbyterian Board, its representative in the 
meeting of secretaries before alluded to, said that his Board 
could not consent to union work, and that their churches 
must be distinctly Presbyterian. And as a reply to its mis- 
sionaries, the Board itself published, in the number for Feb- 
ruary, 1873, of its missionary magazine, an article taking the 
ground that " we see not how missionaries can wisely adopt 
union church organizations abroad. They must, for obvious 
reasons, represent the churches that send them out and sup- 
port them." 

In September, 1873, a second native Japanese church was 
formed in the city of Yeddo, and began a prosperous work. 
Until a native could be qualified for the post, the Rev. David 
Thompson, a beloved Presbyterian missionary, was chosen to 
act as pastor. In his speech accepting the position, Mr. 
Thompson said : 

"Not as a missionary, nor as a Presbyterian, but as a man and a Chris- 
tian, with human and Christian sympathies, I accept the temporary pastor- 
ship of this native Christian Church." 

Both churches grew and flourished. Yet, two months later, 
when this second native church was but fairly in operation, 



6o Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 

six Presbyterian missionaries, mostly from other parts of 
Japan, in obedience to the written orders of the Secretary of 
the Presbyterian Board of Missions, came to Yeddo, and 
proceeded to form a Presbytery for the purpose of organizing 
denominational churches ! Mr. Thompson, of the native 
church, was desired, though not officially requested, to resign. 

The Japanese Christians were now in trouble. All the 
Protestant converts in the Empire did not number fourscore, 
yet representatives of fifteen different Christian sects were 
trying to proselyte them. The Dutch Reformed wanted to 
'label them ; the EpiscopaHans were at them to come into the 
true succession ; a noted Methodist divine, then in Japan on 
consular business, urged the planting of '' a pure Methodism " 
in the Empire, and was promising free passage to America and 
education to all who would join his denomination and study 
for its ministry ; and the Presbyterians had actually organized 
to press them into their Imes. These pious Japanese were 
brave men ; some of them had professed Christianity when 
edicts against it were hung on the public highways, and when 
to be a Christian was to risk bonds and death ; but they trem- 
bled now before this terrible spirit of sectarianism. 

On the i6th of January, 1874, the native converts of Yeddo 
and Yokohama met in conclave, admitting none of the foreign 
missionaries, and prepared one of the most remarkable docu- 
ments ever seen by the religious world — a document which, 
utterly innocent of any such purpose, has fixed an ineradicable 
stain upon every sect in Christendom. It was in the form of 
a manifesto, written by themselves in Japanese, and translated 
into English by the two members whose names are appended. 
It was as follows: 

" To the Christian Missionaries i7t Japan the following is respectfttlly 
submitted: 

" In the third month of the year of our Lord, 1872, the whole body of 
native believers, having assembled in Yokohama, after mutual consultation, 
with one accord, established the ' First native Christian church in Japan.' 
This church, without concerning itself in the least with any of the sects of 
the different foreign countries, simply makes the Bible its rule of conduct, 
and depends only upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

" We, therefore, regard those whose principles exactly accord with the 
Bible, as the servants of Christ and our brothers. And whosoever, not 
regarding sects, but pitying the immaturity of our infant church, teaches 
the pure and perfect truth of the Bible, every such person will be welcomed 
as our minister. 



Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 6i 

" In all sincerity, then, we ask of you, the foreign missionaries and be- 
lievers in the holy doctrines of Jesus, that, taking the Bible as the only rule 
of conduct, without regarding your sects or harboring malice among your- 
selves, but working amicably, you would pity this our weak little church and 
help its insufficiency, and would exert your strength so as soon to bring the 
people of this whole land under the grace of the salvation and redemption 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

" The above is the genuine expression of the whole church. 

" Respectfully submitted in behalf of the Japanese Christian church. 

" The above is a true copy of the article adopted by the churches of our 
Lord Jesus Christ in Yeddo and Yokohama, at this meeting in Yokohama, 
January i6, 1874. 

" Committee i OSHIKAWA Masayoshi 

of \ and 

Translation. { Shirozaki Kinosaki." 

This paper, which no foreigner suggested or saw until writ- 
ten and translated by the native Christians, was presented to 
the Protestant missionaries of Yeddo and Yokohama, and 
afterward sent to all in Japan. 

After such an expression as that, little remains for us to 
say. We would only recall to mind the fact that these events 
were transpiring at the very time when the sects of Christen- 
dom were amusing the union sentiment by gushing speeches 
in the Evangelical Alliance in New York. Eloquent for union 
here and stamping it down on the foreign field. 

As we look over all these records, this fact comes plainly to 
view : Our foreign missionaries and converts are everywhere in 
open co7iflict with our sectarian managers at home. That the 
merits of the conflict may be fairly understood, we will close 
with a specimen of the arguments on both sides. Our extracts 
are taken from the regular Reformed (Dutch) publications. 

The Rev. J. V. N. Talmage, Reformed Dutch missionary, 
writing in favor of making the native churches entirely inde- 
pendent of all denominations, says : 

" The missionaries should labor to Christianize the people, and constitute 
purely Japanese churches, not branches, in Japan of English and American 
churches." 

The Rev. Dr. S. R. Brown, of the same denomination, the 
oldest missionary in Japan, advocating the same thing, says : 

" I rejoice greatly at the stand the native churches have taken, and I see 
no reason why they may not ask and expect the Divine blessing on their 
determination. I want no greater success in Japan than to see such churches 



62 Divisions Hurt the Foreign Field. 

multiply. The fact that such a course of procedure brings no glory to any 
man or body of men is its best feature. To God be all the glory. If the 
churches in Christendom are not satisfied with such a return for their mis- 
sionary enterprises, the worse it is for their Christianity, in my humble 
opinion. Alas ! how much selfishness there is in the Church of God, when 
the ingatherings of believers in the remotest quarters of the globe must be 
labeled with the names of the sects by whose instrumentality they have 
been made, in order to keep alive their interest in the work. It does seem 
a humiliating confession that the motive which induces them to send the 
Gospel abroad in the earth is something else than the love of Christ. Truly 
there is some great wrong here. I hope the unprecedented course things 
have taken here, may serve to disclose that evil to the consciences and 
hearts of believers at home. Surely those who attempt to bring sectarian 
divisions into Japan have no enviable task before them." 

In opposition, the Christian Intelligencer of New York, or- 
gan of the Reformed (Dutch) denomination, admits that " the 
two native churches in Japan consist, so far as man can judge, 
of sincere, earnest, active Christians," but defends the action 
of its sect in these words : 

" The Board of Missions of the Reformed Church adopted a resolution 
disapproving of the organization of the union church at Yokohama. The 
reasons why such action was taken are obvious, namely : The Board was 
simply the agent of the Reformed Church and its representative, and only 
that, in this business, having no independent ecclesiastical authority, and 
being as to itself and its missionaries absolutely without authority to estab- 
lish any but Reformed churches, and having no right whatsoever to make a 
new creed and new rules of church order, or to countenance those who 
might do such a thing. The Board also held that instead of removing the 
evils of denominationalism, its mission had really allowed and favored the 
formation of an additional denomination. The Board also presented the 
fact that the Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and others would never 
consent to the union project, and that, therefore, the evils of denomination- 
alism would not be avoided, and the union church would be such only in 
name. The Board also expressed its opinion that the benefits of denomi- 
nationalism exceeded its evils, that denominations had arisen providentially 
and were likely to continue, and would, indeed, inevitably exist as long as 
men held various opinions and were conscientious. The mission was also 
told that nowhere had denominationalism hindered the progress of missions 
amongst the heathen. The mission defended its action, and pleaded for 
permission to go on upon the way it had entered. The Board has tacitly 
allowed the experiment to be tried, but no resolution to that effect has 
been even offered." 

Such is the dispute going on in all our sects. It brings out 
two things very plain : 

(i). The responsibility of demoralizing and breaking up our 



Divisions Hurt the Fo feign Field. 6 



missions to the heathen, does not rest upon any Boards, bish- 
ops, or agents whatever — they merely perform their prescribed 
functions ; it rests upon the sects which appoint them, and 
upon us who send our men and money through them. So 
long as we do our work through sects, so long must we expect 
discord and failure on the foreign field. 

(2). The sects intend to stand up for their own existence as 
providential institutions, whose benefits exceed their evils. 

The question thus presented appeals for decision to the 
heart of every American Christian ; no pastor can decide for 
his flock ; no believer can shift it on to another ; each one must 
determine in the light of God's Word, and as he will answer 
at the final day. As for ourselves, we hesitate not to say that 
we believe the mission of our sects is over, and that the time 
has come to carry out the prayer of Christ. We cannot but 
feel that the revered author of '' A Leaf from the Tree of 
Life " was directed by the Spirit, when he wrote : 

" The Gospel cannot accomplish its great triumph, and collect the re- 
deemed from every land, until the law of Christ be fulfilled by these Prot- 
estant sects. Jesus Christ will not sustain us ; the Holy Spirit will not 
overshadow us with His presence ; we shall waste those very energies and 
instrumentalities which are required for the work ; we shall not possess the 
character requisite for the work ; we shall be impeded in our movements 
among the heathen, and prove their scorn and derision ; Hke the Israelites 
of old, we shall die in the wilderness in view of the promised land, and 
leave the glory and the blessedness of crossing the Jordan to a generation 
who understand our Christianity better, and imbibe its pure spirit without 
these sross and bitter mixtures." 



CHAPTER IV. 

DIVISIONS HURT THE HOME FIELD. 

" Behind the squaw's light birch canoe, 
The steamer rocks and raves ; 
The city lots are staked for sale 
Above the Indian graves. 

" I hear the tread of pioneers — 
Of nations yet to be — 
The first low wash of waves where soon 
Shall roam a human sea. 

" The rudiments of Empire here 
Are plastic yet and warm ; 
The chaos of a mighty world 

Is rounding into form." — WHITTIER. 

A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

While editing a paper in the city of New York devoted 
to the unity of the Church, the writer received a multitude 
of communications on the subject. One of these slashed 
through the question in such a business way, that we saw at 
once it was from some merchant, who, having made a fortune 
in the city, had retired into one of the beautiful suburbs to 
enjoy it. It read as follows : 

" Mr. Editor : — I reside in a quiet, but thickly-settled rural neighbor- 
hood, some distance above New York, yet so near that families are con- 
stantly coming from there to add to our numbers, and I have seen for 'quite 
a while that the building of a church was in the direct order of events. 

" We have already people in our vicinity, abundantly able in numbers 
and wealth, to put up and maintain a first class enterprise ; the only ques- 
tion is : What shall it be ? Here is the rub ! We have about thirty house- 
holds, and thirty-one kinds of belief (two of the families occupy ono 
dwelling). 

" Not that there is any contention ; we don't care enough about your 

fine-spun theologies for that, but we are a pretty intelligent set, and each 

man thinks for himself. Now the question is : What kind of an affair is 

the thing for us ? What sort of preaching shall we have ? What name 

(64) 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 65 

shall we give ourselves ? The building of the church waits for these queries 
to be answered. Some one suggested what is called a Union Church, 
where a Methodist preaches in the morning, and a Baptist in the evening, 
etc., a denominational partnership. We shut the gates right down on that. 
Let some one sect have it all or none. We do not want a church belonging 
to different parties who would be quarrehng about it all the time. We 
have lived quite amicably together, our variety of views just spicing up our 
social circle somewhat, and we do not want the church to set us at sixes 
and sevens ; and yet it would be a pity for any one denomination to take 
charge, for then the great majority of us would have to be pulled in. 

" To simmer it all down, we want to know, if we go ahead and put up as 
neat a stone church as there is above the island, and put a stone parsonage 
next door, and fix things like a new pin, couldn't we get a man to just 
come and be our minister, and preach out of .the Bible to us, and take care 
of us, and let us take care of him, and not name us anything, or fix us to 
any denomination at all ? 

"If we could do that, we should all join in, and put up something to be 
proud of, otherwise there will be half a dozen horse-sheds set up against 
the side-hills, and folks generally not caring a continental for any of them. 

"SUGAR MAPLE.'' 



This set us a-thinking. Such enterprises are always taken 
in hand by our denominations ; but really, what business had 
any denomination with the matter at all ? These '' thirty 
households with thirty-one kinds of belief" could surely grant 
their pastor the same toleration they accorded each other ; 
why, then, should not some godly man go there and minister 
to them all, he holding his opinions and they theirs ; and in- 
stead of being told by some outside synod or convention how 
to worship, why should they not consult with each other and 
suit all sides, by having — say, some taste of a liturgy in the 
morning, a Presbyterian service in the afternoon, and a rous- 
ing Methodist prayer-meeting in the evening? And instead 
of having half a dozen ministers to do their baptizing, why 
not let the same minister baptize all in different ways accord- 
ing to their convictions? In that case, they would never have 
to beg a cent, would have an elegant sanctuary completely 
furnished, no debt, and after paying minister and sexton, and 
aiding their poor, would have a generous surplus for mission- 
ary work beyond. All required would be for each Christian, 
instead of quartering himself and opinion off into a sect, to 
join with the others as the church of that place, on the Bible 
maxim of '' forbearing one another in love." 

It appeared so sensible that we took up the Bible to inves- 
5 



66 Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 

tigate, and there found it to be the very plan upon which 
the early churches were established ! 

For instance, there was the Church at Antioch. Just after 
Peter's vision, which showed that the Gentiles were to be 
received, even though they did not conform with the Jews to 
the ritual of Moses, a church was founded in Antioch on this 
principle of mutual sufferance. 

" Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that 
arose about Stephen, traveled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, 
preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only. 

" And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they 
were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. 

" And the hand of the Lord was with them : and a great number be- 
lieved, and turned unto the Lord. 

" Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which 
was in Jerusalem : and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far 
as Antioch. 

"Who, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and 
exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the 
Lord. 

" For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith : and 
much people was added unto the Lord. 

" Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul : 

" And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it 
came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, 
and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in 
Antioch." — Acts xi. 19-26. 

We see here that the Apostles, before this congregation of 
mixed opinions, " Jews and religious proselytes," as they are 
called in another place, preached simply " the Lord Jesus," 
and let them hold their various views without any interfer- 
ence. This Church at Antioch was the headquarters of Paul 
and Barnabas. " They abode there a long time," says the 
Record ; but they made no attempt to assimilate the opinions 
of their hearers. The Jews remained Jews and the Gentiles 
remained Gentiles ; yet all along it continued to be the one 
" Church at Antioch." And this tolerating Church was the 
very one that gave us our name. These Antioch disciples, 
the first to forbear with each others' peculiarities, had the 
immortal honor of first wearing the name of CHRISTIANS ! 

" Now there was a day when the sons of God came to 
present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also 
among them." He came into the peaceful band at Antioch 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 6y 

in the shape of sectarian propagandists, men who maintained 
that others should think as they did, or, if not, should stand 
one-side. What happened ? The Church at Antioch, with 
Paul and Barnabas at its head, fought against them as com- 
mon enemies, and appealed from them to the Church at 
Jerusalem. 

" And certain men which came down from Judea, taught the brethren 
and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot 
be saved. 

" When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispu- 
tation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain 
other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about 
this question." — Acts xv. i, 2. 

But at Jerusalem were some who, though converted, had 
not yet come to be Christians ; that is, had not yet learned 
to fellowship with those who differed from them. They were 
sectarians, called in the text " certain of the sect of the 
Pharisees." These insisted on uniformity. 

" And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the 
church, and of the apostles, and elders, and they declared all things that 
God had done with them. 

"But there rose up certain of the sect. of the Pharisees, which believed, 
saying, That it was needful to circumcise them and to command them to 
keep the law of Moses. 

•* And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter." 
— Acts XV. 4, 5, 6. 

The Church at Jerusalem, fresh from the instructions ot 
Jesus Christ, took up then the denominational question — not 
whether circumcision was right, they all agreed as to that — 
but whether those who did not think as they did upon it, 
should be required to conform. Speeches were made on both 
sides ; when all were heard, James, the brother of our Lord, 
gave his mind in these words : " My sentence is that we 
trouble not them which from among the Gentiles are turned to 
God." Such being the general verdict, they sent back to 
Antioch this message : 

" The apostles, and elders, and brethren, send greeting unto the brethren 
which are of the Gentiles in Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia. 

" Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us, 
have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying. Ye must be 
circumcised, and keep the law ; to whom we gave no such commandment : 



6S Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 

" It seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send 
chosen men unto you, with our beloved Barnabas and Paul : 

" Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our T.ord Jesus 
Christ. 

"We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell jyou the 
same things by mouth. 

" For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no 
greater burden than these necessary things ; 

" That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from 
things strangled, and from fornication ; from which if ye keep yourselves, 
ye shall do well. Fare ye well." — Acts xv. 23-29. 

Which was only another way of saying — Behave yourselves ; 
act like Christians, and as to these matters of opinion, let 
every man think for himself. 

The remarkable thing about this is its being in the Bible so 
plain, with hardly any heed paid to it. When sectarian prop- 
agators come among us, instead of fighting them as Paul and 
Barnabas, and the Antioch Christians did, we actually welcome 
them ; we hand them the mallet to drive in the wedge ; we 
hurry to break away from our brethren who do not think as 
we think, kneel as we kneel, and receive baptism just as we 
do ! Instead of building Christian churches, such as the Apos- 
tles did, and as " Sugar Maple " was groping after, we bring 
the knife into every village, and cut the Divine Body into so 
many pieces that scarce a drop of blood is left in any of 
them. 

Let us consider in this chapter what our unscriptural course 
has done to the churches of America. 



THE EASTERN STATES. 

Beginning at Plymouth Rock, we received the following 
statement from the Rev. James C. Seagrave, a pastor in that 
vicinity : 

" Let me cite the instance of the " Old Colony," Plymouth County, Massa- 
chusetts, of blessed memory, the home of the Pilgrim Fathers, the nurse of 
the Church, the mother of States. This county contains one hundred and 
six churches with the usual variety of denominations. 

" One-half of these churches may be considered large and flourishing. 
Of the other half, many are poor in resources and in numbers, frequently 
requiring missionary aid for the support of their pastors. 

" Here are eleven churches in one town, containing 6,238 inhabitants ; 
and here are nine churches for 4,687 people. Here are four churches for 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field, 69 

1,628 inhabitants, and here we find six churches for a town containing a 
population of 1,659 people." 

Think of that — many churches within sight of Plymouth 
Rock too poor to take care of themselves ! What a poverty- 
stricken race the descendants of the Mayflower must have 
become ! 

Without tarrying further in this section, we need only sub- 
join the following statement given to the Boston Congrega- 
tionalist by a neighboring pastor, as it shows the state of 
things all over New England : 

" As I sit in my study, surveying mentally my own field of labor and a 
narrow fringe of the countr}^ immediately adjoining it, I am both surprised 
and pained to find so many unnecessary churches. They number more 
than one-half of the whole. And I am quite sure that this is true of other 
localities as it is of this. More than one-half of the existing churches in 
our land, to say the least, are unnecessar}% and the cost of supporting them 
is simply a wicked waste of the Lord's money. 

" In the survey referred to abbve, my eye rests upon five centers of pop- 
ulation, for each of which one Protestant church, with a qualified and faith- 
ful pastor, would be a liberal provision. But what are the actual facts ? 

'• No. I, which lies four miles to the east of me, is an old agricultural town 
or \'illage, in the center of which stands one of the old historical churches 
of New England, with sitting capacity to accommodate twice the number 
of actual Protestant worshipers to be found within the limits of the parish. 
That church has settled over it, a wise, cultured, and devoted pastor, who 
would be glad ' to break the bread of life ' to all the inhabitants of that 
parish. The testimony of plain, common-sense in reference to that place, 
would undoubtedly be, that it does not need more than that one old his- 
torical church at present. Moreover, it never has needed another, and 
there is not a shadow of reason for supposing that it will need another for 
a century to come. 

" Yet that village actually contains tw^o other churches, one of which has 
been in a semi-defunct state from the hour of its untimely birth until now, 
having been compelled, on several occasions, to suspend, for months and 
years at a time, all attempts at performing the functions of a Christian 
church. 

" Moreover, in the very face of this significant fact, and in spite of earnest 
protest from those who understood the needs of the place, and sought to 
supply them, a minister belonging to another denomination still, having a 
redundancy of sectarian zeal, went into that village some two years ago, 
and set up another church, or rather ' schism shop,' where there was already 
one too many ! 

"No. 2 is a manufacturing village of some ten or twelve hundred inhabit- 
ants, a large percentage of whom are Roman Catholics. Ten years ago 
that village had one Protestant church, and needed no more, and needs no 



yo Divisions Hurt the Home Field, 

more now. During that time, however, two other churches have been 
needlessly set up, one of which enjoys a sort of artificial life, while the 
other is now passing through a period of suspended animation, with some 
prospects that it will glorify God more by its death than it ever has done 
by its life. 

" It costs at least $1,500 to run that same church, while scarcely a score 
of people occupy its pews on Sabbath mornings. Yet an earnest and faith- 
ful pastor is doing his best to build it up. 

" No. 3 is a manufacturing village of some one thousand five hundred or 
two thousand inhabitants, a large share of whom are Roman Catholics. 
Ten or fifteen years ago there was one Protestant church in that village, 
with a house of worship more than ample to accommodate all the Protest- 
ant worshipers of the place. Yet while such were the facts — while there 
was still room enough in the house of prayer to accommodate them, and 
while the Gospel was still proclaimed in its purity to them every Sabbath 
by a competent pastor — a few opinionated men and women, with far more 
sectarian zeal than prudence, led by an unwise and equally over-zealous 
minister, started another church in that village, and set up the skeleton of 
another house of Worship, hard by the old one, ten times as large as it was 
necessary to accommodate them, in which, with a burden of some $10,000 
crushing them, they have been ' dying daily^' ever since. 

" One would naturally suppose that, with such a wretched example of 
failure before him, and such a monument of folly casting its ominous shadow 
upon his path every day, no man in his right mind would undertake to 
start another ' church ' in that place very soon ; and yet, another was act- 
ually started there, some three or four years ago, and is still struggling 
hard to maintain its wretched and unnecessary existence. 

" No. 4 is both an agricultural and a manufacturing village of from ten 
to twelve hundred inhabitants. Besides the original church in that place, 
there are two others, both weak and lifeless, of course, and neither of 
which can offer any other reason than sectarian zeal for its existence. But 
this is not all — the devotees of another sect are discussing ' the necessity ' 
of starting another church still in that village. One good brother had set 
his heart upon going there to close his earthly career by building 'just 
one church more.' But while that purpose was still pending, God graciously 
took the good brother to Himself. 

" No. 5 is a small hamlet, the center of a poor and old agricultural town. 
One church was all that town could possibly have needed, even in its palm- 
iest days. At present it could not support one church without aid from 
abroad ; yet that poor old town has in its decaying little hamlet two 
churches : the old original church, which is kept in a state of semi-anima- 
tion by means of missionary aid, and a 'schism shop,' whose real mission 
seems to be to kill the old church, and die itself in the operation. 

" Thus we have fourteen churches where only five are really needed. 
And the results in all cases are : a serious weakening of the old churches, 
the doubling and trebling of the expenses, without any real increase in the 
ratio of the worshipers. Now let Christian people of all denominations ask 
themselves in all seriousness the question : ' Are these things right } Is 
this the way to serve Christ and His cause ? ' " 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 71 

We gather from this that the vivisection of the Body of 
Christ is all the while getting worse and worse. And this is 
corroborated by a late report from the Rev. David B. Coe, 
D.D., Secretary of the American Home Missionary Society, 
which states that during the ten years previous the number 
of missionary churches in Connecticut had doubled, and in 
Massachusetts had increased threefold. He furthermore says: 

" We find hundreds of churches in the decaying communities of the East 
which supply no real want of the people, which are a heavy burden upon 
the denominations to which they belong, which must struggle with poverty 
for generations to come, and which are preying upon, instead of praying 
for, their neighbors of other names and creeds." 

The Rev. Dr. Holbrook, Secretary of the New York Home 
Missionary Society, endorses these statements, and adds : 

" I could name scores of towns in this State where there exist two, three, 
four, five churches, and where there is not a decent congregation attending 
any one of them, and where not one society is able to sustain its minister." 

Says an eminent clergyman of Central New York : 

"What is the great burden and care of these churches } It is a burden 
of poverty, an outcry of distress, an asking for help. From two-thirds of 
all the villages and rural districts throughout this State, this is the report : 

" ' Our population is less than one thousand. 

" * We have four meeting-houses. 

" ' Our average congregation is eighty. 

" ' We are burdened with debt. 

" ' Brethren, we are weak ; come and help us.' " 

''OUT WEST." 

Let us think what that means. Starting to cross our terri- 
tory on a railroad four thousand miles long, we at last reach 
the Mississippi, which with its tributaries has ten thousand 
miles of steamboat navigation. We have done but a third of 
our journey. Hundreds of miles further on we come to Oma- 
ha, and still we are east of the line which divides our country 
from north to south. We have not had a glimpse of empires 
to the right and left — Texas, larger than France, larger than 
the original thirteen States of our Union. 

How fast the West is filling with population. Can we real- 
ize that it is less than a century since the first sermon was 
preached in Ohio, in a block-house at Marietta ? At the be- 



72 Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 

ginning of this century the center of our population was near 
Baltimore, now it is west of Cincinnati. A few years ago the 
President of the United States recommended the removal of 
the New York Indians to the vacant Territory of Wisconsin, 
because '' they could remain there forever uninterrupted by 
the encroachments of the white man." Wisconsin has now a 
million of inhabitants. The frontier line of population, eight- 
een hundred miles long north and south, is annually pushed 
sixteen miles further west, adding an area of new settlements 
each year equal to half of New England. One year we learn 
that a new Territory has been marked off, the next year we 
find it has become a State and is sending Senators to Wash- 
ington. 

And what a population it is. The highest state of man- 
hood comes from a mixture of races. The greatness of En- 
gland is due to the fact that it was settled by the Britons, 
Romains, Picts, Saxons, Danes, and Normans. By some mys- 
terious process of nature, different elements of mind, character, 
and blood, bring out their sharpest traits when mingled, and 
build up a new race whose genius and enterprise excel all 
their ancestors. Go to the Castle Garden in New York and 
see the emigrants landing there, thousands every week. Go 
to the Alleghanies and you will find the stream pouring over 
them ceaselessly into the West. Who make up that stream ? 
English, Irish, Scotch, Germans, French, Swedes, Swiss, Ital- 
ians, yea, every nationality under the sun. Paupers are there 
begging their way and princes seeking adventure, peasants 
and university professors, Jesuit priests and Communist rad- 
icals. Millions of Africans are already in the great interior 
basin of our continent, and the Asiatics are pouring in from 
the Pacific Coast. 

The thoughtful Christian sees that some mighty destiny is 
in reserve for this land. A hundred and fifty years ago good 
Bishop Berkeley came hither from the Old World, feeling 
that nowhere else could he make his life so tell upon the 
future. And he wrote this prophecy : 

"America, 1730. 

' There shall be sung another golden age, 
The rise of empires and of arts. 
The good and great inspiring epic page ; ■ 
The wisest heads and noblest hearts. 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. y2> 

" Not such as Europe breeds in her decay ; 
Such as she bred when fresh and young, 
When heavenly flame did animate her clay, 
By future poets shall be sung. 

" Westward the course of empire bends its way — 

The first four acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama and the day ; 
Time's noblest offspring is the last." 

Fifty years ago, Archibald Alexander, at Princeton, saw 
this stream flowing onward to the West, and said : '' The 
great battle of Armageddon will probably be fought in the 
valley of the Mississippi." This is the field the Church is to 
cultivate for Christ. Here she is to build her family altars, 
her sanctuaries, and schools. Here she is to meet an incom- 
ing world with the Gospel. 

HOW WE WORK THIS FIELD. 

Scripture says, " Let everything be done decently and in 
orderT Common-sense says, before undertaking such a gi- 
gantic enterprise, we ought to understand each other, and so 
arrange our forces that each man shall be placed where he 
can do most good, and each dollar go to the right spot. Un- 
fortunately, being divided, we do not go into the field as the 
one body of Christ, we go in as sects ; and each sect, looking 
merely to its own advancement, plunges ahead in its own 
fashion, without regard to the others, except to hinder and 
outwit them. The result is a scene of wild and monstrous 
mismanagement. 

First, notice what is not done. Although the United States 
Census shows an average of one church to every thousand of 
our population, these are so unequally distributed that many 
districts are destitute. All over the West are neighborhoods 
of infidels and backsliders who do not have the Gospel, and 
do not want it. That they do not call for it, is all the more 
reason for sending it to them, but for want of system we do 
not reach them. 

But into the promising villages and the important points 
on the new railways we do go with a rush. By the time the 
trees are blazed, a Methodist preacher is on hand with the 
means of grace ; when a wagon road is cut out, a Baptist has 
arrived; as a turnpike is finished, a Presbyterian comes along; 



74 Divisions Hurt the Home Field, 

and the first whistle of a locomotive brings an Episcopalian, 
hurrying in as if there could never be any church or religion 
till he got there. Each one organizes a society according to 
his sect. Any three people found to differ a little from their 
neighbors are fired with a holy zeal to put up a meeting-house. 
The new community is thus over-supplied with preaching. 
Instead of one vigorous church, there are half a dozen feeble 
factions, not one of which can stand alone, each one of which 
exhausts itself in putting up a building too big to be filled or 
paid for, and then, harassed by debt, crouches around its un- 
finished altar, and piteously begs its denominational board 
for help. Few converts are made, general revivals are impos- 
sible, and Christianity is blocked. 

This is the story all over the West. Every village suffers 
from the division of its church. There is a certain stone 
called " tyrrhenus," which in its entire natural state will swim 
on the water, but if you break it each piece will sink. The 
one Body of Christ would be generously maintained in all 
these communities ; one man of God, backed by a united 
Christian testimony, would speak with power ; but when rival 
pulpits press each other down and bigots tear asunder the 
Bible in curbstone controversies, people turn away in scorn, 
and each one fails of success. Let a merchant do business as 
the Church does hers, and he would be bankrupt in a month ; 
let an army go forth in that fashion and it would be defeated 
from the start. 

But let us look into it more particularly. From thousands 
of testimonies we received on the subject, we give a few 
specimens. 

The Rev. A. E. Everest, of Ludlow, 111., said : 

"Every month's experience and observation appeals to my head and 
heart to pray, ' O Lord, how long shall the people thus suffer, and Thy 
cause be thus hindered ! ' We have four churches where there need be 
but one." 

The Rev. Jacob F. Guyton, of Chebanse, 111., said : 

" Our village has about eight hundred people and five churches — Roman 
Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, and Congregational, and members 
of other denominations not yet organized. None of them are able to sus- 
tain a pastor except the Catholics, and many of their members come from 
long distances in the country. All are crippled, weak, and inefficient." 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field, 75 

From the same State another friend wrote : 

" This town of three thousand has thirteen denominations, most of them 
hanging on by their eyelashes to 'keep alive ; two church buildings would 
seat all who attend." 

The correspondent of a Presbyterian exchange in Chicago 
wrote to that paper thus : 

" In the town where I live near the Mississippi, with a population of 140 
or 160 inhabitants, there are four Protestant church organizations — a Pres- 
byterian, a Methodist, a Baptist, and a Campbellite. The Presbyterian, 
the first on the field, was organized ten years ago, with nine members. At 
the end of its first nine years it had a total membership of seven women, 
and had been stricken from the roll. Then our missionary went there and 
called together fifteen Presbyterians. The Methodist has twenty members, 
and is partly supported by the Conference. The Campbellite has five mem- 
bers, and is building an edifice. The Baptist has somewhat more than any 
of the others (numbers not stated). So, for a population of 150 persons, 
with say sixty church members, standing on the same Bible, and all sus- 
tained more or less by missionary funds." 

Crossing the river into Kentucky, we had accounts of a 
petty village there where were a few Christians of the Presby- 
terian name, seventeen all told. But as to the late civil war, 
which the politicians and soldiers fought and settled and shook 
hands on years ago, these seventeen could not agree, so they 
divided, and organized a Northern Presbyterian Society and 
a Southern Presbyterian Society, the one with ten members, 
the other with seven. Next came doleful appeals to the Mis- 
sion Boards and Sustentation Committees for help. '^ Awful 
destitution ! " " Minister starving ! " etc., etc. 

The Rev. G. W. Finnell, of Cleveland, Tenn., wrote : 

" Cleveland has six brick churches, which all hold worship at the same 
hour of the day, while one church building would be sufficient for all the 
worshipers. We have great need of union here." 

The Rev. W. P. Paxon, Superintendent of the South- 
western Department of the American Sunday-school Union, 
said : 

" During the month I have been working in Texas. We find many little 
towns and villages where there is quite a religious element, but divided 
between members of several religious denominations, who are often so sep- 
arated that they will not attend each other's meetings, even when they have 
none of their own. 

" The town from which I write has no church building, but six denomi- 
nations." 



"j^ Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 

The Rev. H. W. Bennett, a Methodist pastor in Iowa, 
wrote : 

" I am now living- in a town whose population is estimated from 600 to 
1,000 souls. Within a circle of ten miles you will find the following so- 
cieties, some of them efficiently and some inefficiently doing Christian work : 
The Methodist Episcopal having a church and pastor ; the Baptist (close 
communion) having a chapel and pastor ; the Christian Disciple having a 
church, but no pastor ; the Congregational, a pastor, but no church ; the 
German Methodist Episcopal, the Allbrights, the Free Methodists, the 
United Brethren, the Advents, and what are called here. Hardshell Bap- 
tists, all having occasional preaching. The Dunkards having regular 
stated services. Add to these a scattering of Presbyterians, Universalists, 
Unitarians, Spiritualists, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics. You thus 
have a fair view of our religious complexion." 

As to Kansas, the Rev. J. Mills Ashley wrote : 

" I know a small place in Kansas, with about two hundred and fifty in- 
habitants, where there are nov^ Jive churches organized, and there is a laud- 
able (?) desire to organize two or three more. Do not these professed 
Christians disgrace the name of the Master ? " 

As to the same State, the Rev. E. P. Marvin wrote : 

" I know a village in Kansas, of five hundred inhabitants. They have 
five church organizations, and no church buildings. Three pastors are in 
the field. Those five miniature churches are now receiving two thousand 
dollars of missionary money. One man entered the place like a lion, and 
promised ' to see his church through.' He sunk about half of his property, 
and did not see his sect through, and left the place more like a lamb. If 
these five sects can protract their dying life (which God forbid), and each 
one keep about even with the others, at the present rate of increase, the 
child is not born who will see a self-supporting, strong, and efficient church 
in the place." 

As to Minnesota, the Rev. Dr. Coe reported to his Society: 

" Two years ago, a missionary of the American Home Missionary So- 
ciety commenced labor in a small village in Minnesota which was entirely 
destitute of religious privileges. Christians of every name welcomed him 
and pledged him their support. A church was formed and a little chapel 
erected, which then accommodated, and would still accommodate, every 
worshiper in the village and as many more. But do they all worship in it ? 
No ! The wedge of schism has been driven through and through this 
little company, till, in that village of 300 people, we find seven congrega- 
tions of as many denominations. And the same process is going on with- 
out rebuke in multitudes of places all over the West." 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. "jj 

Speaking of a place still further west, the same writer says : 

" Four years ago, the American Home Missionary Society stationed a 
missionary at the capital of a new Territory, where the Gospel had not yet 
been preached. He gathered a church, and Christians of several denomi- 
nations promised to aid in sustaining him. But, within a few weeks, three 
other churches were organized, partly from materials wrought into the first. 
They have erected houses of worship and maintained their ministers chiefly 
through aid from abroad. The whole number of worshipers in that town, 
on a pleasant Sabbath morning, is about loo, and is not increasing. If 
they were united as at first, under one minister, they could support him 
well. They could sustain two with a little missionary aid. But the four, 
though receiving each but about one-half the amount paid to the teacher 
of the public school, must be maintained at a cost, to the cause of benev- 
olence, of about $3,000 a year. Yet all these churches insist, and are advised 
to insist, upon their right to live. With the first, it is the right of the oldest ; 
with the second, the right of the strongest ; with the third, the right of the 
largest ; and with the fourth, the right of the highest. 

" Such a waste of ministerial labor and charitable funds would be crim- 
inal under any circumstances and at any time ; it is doubly so at such a 
time as this." 

From Oregon, the Rev. J. H. D. Henderson wrote : 

" In the little village of Eugene, Oregon, there is a population of about 
1,000, in which there are six organized churches, each having a commo- 
dious house of worship, with but a few members, and small congregations. 
The houses of worship will furnish sittings for twice the number of inhab- 
itants. The churches are Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, 
Cumberland Presbyterian, Missionary Baptist, and Christian (or Campbel- 
lites), each having a minister and stated preaching, and the most of them 
every Sabbath. The average salary of these ministers is less than $400 per 
annum, and no one receives a salary of $600." 

To appreciate this state of things the better, let us look at 
it in two or three different aspects. 

WASTE OF MONEY. 
Economy is success ; it is accomplishing results with the 
least possible outlay. It is a divine command. " Gather up 
the fragments," said Jesus, "that nothing be lost." The 
Church cannot expect the blessing unless she uses her dollars 
with sanctified common-sense ; unless she puts them where 
they will best tell on the conversion of the world. What, 
then, shall we say of this building half a dozen sanctuaries 
where but one is needed ? How long would a farmer keep 
out the sheriff if he had a separate cook, kitchen, and larder 
for each member of his household ? 



78 



Divisions Httrt the Home Field, 



But let us hear what the brethren in the field say about it. 
Says the Rev. Wm. C. Dawson : 

" Antichrist could have devised no more efficient way of frittering away 
the resources of the Church, and stripping it of its power of aggression, 
than the way which Christians have devised for themselves, by originating 
and maintaining their sectarian divisions. 

" We all know what is meant by a ' struggling church.' Many of our 
readers belong to one — a church which has a chronic difficulty in raising 
funds to meet its necessary expenses. The reason of its being in a * strug- 
gling ' condition is that it is trying to do something that ought not to be 
done at all. It is trying to sustain itself for the purpose of introducing its 
particular sectarianism in that place. And all around are other churches 
* struggling ' in the same way to do the same thing. The Methodist church 
is 'struggling;' so is the Presbyterian, and so is the Episcopalian, while 
three or four kinds of Baptist churches are too near dead even to * struggle.' 
This is a photograph of the religious condition of half the towns of the 
West and of many in the East. Even in our great cities two-thirds of the 
churches are so burdened with debt, and so crippled for lack of means, that 
they can barely maintain their own existence without attempting a stroke 
of work outside." 

An active Christian worker, H. B. Leeper, of Princeton, 111., 
took pains to collect the facts and figures of that place, and 
as it fairly represents all our Western towns of four or five 
thousand inhabitants, we give his statement and remarks : 

" The following are the statistics of thirteen of the churches of Princeton. 
The fourteenth — the Catholic — I have not yet obtained : 



Names of Churches. 



Methodist Episcopal . 
Methodist Protestant. 
Methodist (African). . 

Presbyterian 

Baptist 

Congregational 

Christian 

Eng. Lutheran 

S. E. Lutheran 

S. E. M. S. L 

U. R. Lutheran 

St. John Lutheran . . . 
Episcopal 



1^ 


^^ 


1 


^-s 


•C s 


^ 


^? 


^^? 




a" 


^' 


1 


$14,000 


$2,700 


$1,200 


12,000 




900 


900 




150 


25,000 


.... 


1,500 


7,000 




600 


14,000 




2,000 


12,000 




600 


1,500 


1,500 


800 


3.500 


3-500 


800 


1,500 




300 


1,000 


1,200 


400 


3,000 




600 


6,000 




1,000 


$101,400 


$8,900 


$10,850 






$800 


ISO 


600 


70 


100 


25 


350 


200 


300 


80 


500 


217 


300 


125 


100 


65 


600 


500 


100 


60 


200 


18 


300 


32 


100 


46 


$4,350 


1.538 






75 
125 

35 
150 

70 
150 

70 

70 
200 

80! 

75 

120 I 
40 I 

1,260 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 79 

" In view of the above figures, what is the honest conclusion of every 
sane person, untrammeled by prejudice ? There can be but one, and that 
is, that the demand of sectarianism is impoverishing the people, while true 
Christianity stands in the background. 

" Every one of these thirteen churches profess and believe that the human 
race was lost in Adam, and must be saved through Christ. All worship 
Almighty God, and take the Bible as His revealed will to man ; believe 
there is a hell to shun and a heaven to gain. 

" What, then, separates these Christian believers into so many sects ? 
Thus necessitating thirteen houses of worship, thirteen ministers, thirteen 
parsonages, thirteen choirs, thirteen Sunday-schools, thirteen sets of church 
officers, thirteen communion sets, thirteen organs, and as many choristers, 
sextons, church-begging sociables, and so on, whereby the community is 
afflicted and tormented into infidelity. When you add to the above amount 
other incidental expenses incurred in keeping up these thirteen organiza- 
tions, you swell the amount to near twenty thousand dollars annually. 

" Now, why all this expenditure, which is most certainly not necessary in 
a town of four or five thousand people ? Does the glory of God or the 
good of man require it } If so, it would be a good thing to do ; but every 
honest Christian thinker knows it is not necessary. The conclusion is in- 
evitable, that it is not benevolently given ; but largely to keep up our is7n." 

Another leading christian of Ottawa, Kansas, wrote : 

"The several denominations, through their boards, to say nothing of pri- 
vate munificence on the part of friends in the East, have put into this little 
burg more than ten thousand dollars ; the same is true of hundreds of other 
towns, and the question is being asked, for what good ? It is plain that if 
our Christianity means anything, and that if we have one God, orle hope, 
and one destiny, there has been inconsiderate Hberality — may I not say, 
wicked emulous waste } 

" Meanwhile the necessities of the multifold churches drive them into all 
haunts and among all classes to solicit subscriptions, till the very presence 
of Christian men and women becomes an offense, and the first thought of 
the worldly man is, ' Miserable beggars are ye all' Two years ago I 
protested that I was done with presenting subscription papers for church 
support, 

" As men come to think of all this, is it any wonder that the contributions 
to the boards fall off .^ The wonder is that sensible men will give anything 
until there is an assurance that both in the home field and the foreign this 
wicked rivalry shall cease." 

As to the still smaller places, we have this testimony from 
the Rev. R. D. Maccarthy : 

" Tonganoxie, Leavenworth County, Kansas, is a type of sectism. That 
city has fifteen houses. It has a Quaker meeting-house, Disciple church, 
and a Methodist church built. It has a hall in its school-house, large 
enough to accommodate all the inhabitants of the city and the suburbs for 



8o Divisions Hurt the Ho77te Field. 

a mile each way, and there the Congreg-ational minister preaches, and the 
children have Sabbath-school in the afternoon. 

" These destitute people are striving for two more churches. What a 
pity they can not have them, and then revise the Lord's Prayer to 'My will 
be done.' 

"I have read pleas for Western towns and 'their terrible destitution.' 
Western towns are scarce that need any missionary money for other than 
purely sectarian purposes. 

" Western people, if they would unite in Christ as they do in building 
States, county seats, school-houses, and railroads, could build all the 
churches and sustain all the ministers necessary. I am not talking at 
random. I have preached in the West for years. 

" The conflict deepens. Sin abounds. The Church is not keeping pace 
with the demands of the age. All sorts of expedients are resorted to. 
Standards are lowered ; unconverted men are counted into the kingdom by 
thousands. Bussing-bees, grab-bag societies, donation visits, cane presen- 
tations, and Satan alone knows what he has next, are resorted to, to keep 
up the interest and to eke out the miserly salaries. Yet we are not holding 
our own." 

And the Rev. Ira C. Billman, writing at the time from Knox 
County, Ohio, sums up the case in these words, which every 
christian ought to read over twice : 

" In this county there are a score of villages, numbering from one to 
two hundred inhabitants. In almost every one of these there are several 
churches. Frequently in their immediate vicinity there are a number more. 
One village of about one hundred inhabitants has three church buildings, 
with every society almost extinct, and no regular pastor in the place ; so 
completely have they devoured each other. Another village of two hundred 
inhabitants has five churches. It requires, on the very lowest estimate, one 
thousand dollars to carry on a church anywhere one year. The salary, re- 
pairs, fuel, light, insurance, all cost, little as it may be. Here, then, we 
have four thousand dollars in one small village literally thrown away. One 
church would be infinitely more efficient and productive. The dilapidated 
buildings, reduced memberships, and deserted churches all over the country 
unite in bearing testimony. 

" Now there are ten thousand such places. We have made our calcula- 
tion carefully. The figures, which are too small for the facts, bring us the 
enormous sum of forty millions of dollars. This is the taxation of denomi- 
nationalism — not Christianity — upon this country in a single year. This 
sum would be sufficient to sustain a missionary in forty thousand heathen 
cities. Or in a few years, by gathering up the fragments that are now 
often worse than lost in this country alone, the Gospel could be carried to 
every living creature. We preachers stand up in our pulpits all over the 
land, and beg our people with tears to contribute to the great and glorious 
work of Home Missions. Touching stories are often related of privations 
undergone in founding a church at some ' important point where our de- 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 8i 

nomination ought to be represented.' How seldom is the question asked 
in establishing a mission : Will it be for the glory of God, and the exten- 
sion of His kingdom ? It is made rather a matter of denominational propa- 
gandism." 

WASTE OF MACHINERY. 

Abolish the sects, give each town according to Scripture 
the royal honor of building up its own church, and you can 
stow away two-thirds of our ecclesiastical machinery as use- 
less lumber. 

Says the Rev. W. W. Dow (Congregationalist) : 

" View the great number of our missionary and other benevolent organi- 
zations. Each sect must have its own. These feeble churches in the same 
village must each be sustained by its own missionary society. Each of 
these must have its board of trustees, secretary, treasurer, and other offi- 
cers, many of these officers receiving much more salary than the hard- 
working, faithful missionaries receive. Simplicity is the genius of effective 
working in mechanics. A machine with several needless parts shows poor 
skill in planning, and each needless part is worse than needless, because it 
just diminishes the chances of effective operation. To say that our relig- 
ious machinery fails to do the most effective work because there is too 
much that is surplus and cumbersome in it, is to say what even the most 
ordinary observer can see." 

Says the Rev. E. P. Marvin (Presbyterian): 

" The largest missionary enterprises of all the churches are operating in 
Home Mission work. 

" The necessity for the existence and expenditures of these various socie- 
ties springs, not from the actual needs of Christ's cause, but from our 
divisions. Sectarianism is the apology for their existence, and the altar 
on which their sacrifices are laid. Abolish these unscriptural divisions, and 
you may disband every home mission society in America, with little or no 
loss, and with infinite gain to the cause of Christ." 

Speaking of the benefits of union, the Christian at Work 
(under Dr. Talmage) said : 

" What a vast expenditure of money it would save in the management 
of church boards. How much unnecessary machinery it would abolish. 
What a long row of secretaries at three and five thousand dollars salary a 
year it would put into the parishes which are now crying out for pastors. 

" Let the whole truth be told. In some cases (not all), the chief obsta- 
cles to the union of the Presbyterian branches into one family, are the 
secretaries and their friends, who would have to seek other spheres of 
usefulness, and the theological professors and their friends, who could be 
spared for another work if once the theological seminaries were united. 
6 



82 Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 

' Where would we go to ? ' ' What would you do with us ? ' is practically 
the cry of those who are financially interested in the continued separation. 
We reply : ' Go to work somewhere else ! ' If the people think you are dull 
and will not hear you preach, take it for granted that the Lord sometimes 
calls men out of the ministry as well as calls others into it." 

As to the religious value of our rival sectarian Publishing 
Houses, a Presbyterian clergyman, professor in one of our most 
important colleges, writing from Philadelphia, said : 

" The building of the noble house for the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation has not allayed the old feeling of opposition toward it on the part 
of the churches. While at the same time the Baptist church has been 
building upon the same street, and next door but one, their great white 
marble publishing house at a cost of $257,000, being, as they themselves 
say, actuated by a desire to excel the Presbyterians, who built a few months 
since upon the same street an immense house for the same purpose. 
(Show !). Here are more than half a million of dollars gone to print books 
which could be bought and given away for less cost than required of the 
charity of Christians to support a 'leaky concern,' while the difference is 
only with regard to the form of one Christian rite ! " 

Look at our Theological Seminaries. A good institution of 
this kind is very costly, both in men and money. Eight or 
ten of them, generously endowed, and judiciously placed in dif- 
ferent parts of the Republic, are all we need or could suitably 
maintain. But see how many the sects have given us : 

Theological Schools. 

Denomination. Seminaries. Professors. Students. 

Presbyterian 15 69 608 

Baptist 17 58 552 

Roman Catholic 15 84 501 

Congregational 7 47 324 

Lutheran -n 28 316 

Methodist Episcopal 8 26 272 

Protestant Episcopal 8 39 239 

Christian 2 5 136 

Reformed 5 12 105 

United Presbyterian 4 13 81 

Universalist 2 9 45 

Free Baptist 2 10 32 

Evangelical Lutheran 2 7 28 

Union Evangelical i 8 27 

Moravian i 3 25 

Unitarian i 7 22 

United Brethren i i ii 



Divisioits Hurt the Home Field. 83 

Denomination. Seminaries. Professors. Students. 

African Methodist Episcopal i . • 8 

New Jerusalem i 4 

Unknown 3 5 ^9. 

Total io8 435 3'35i 

As to our need of all these institutions, the Rev. James H. 
Carruth says : 

" We have more theological seminaries than we need. Forty years ago 
it was thought that a certain theological professor in Connecticut did not 
pronounce Shibboleth just right, and so there must be another theological 
seminary in that little State. And at this very time when some city con- 
gregations are in perishing need of first-rate preachers, four must be taken 
to teach twenty students — five apiece. Why should it be necessary to have 
four theological seminaries in Chicago ; requiring for each an immense 
outlay in buildings and libraries, and the services of four or five of the 
ablest men in each denomination ? There is absolutely no difference be- 
tween Presbyterian and Congregational theology proper, and an hour on 
each side would be sufficient to set forth the advantages of, and the author- 
ity for, their forms of church government. Why should it take four addi- 
tional men because the first four are unwilling to have a fair view of both 
sides presented to their pupils ? The same is true of Congregational and 
Baptist theology with a difference, not about church government, but 
about baptism." 

Another Presbyterian clergyman wrote us rather feelingly 
on the same subject, as follows : 

" If our sectarian seminaries were shut up for a few years it would be a 
blessing to the churches and the world, in view of the shameful and dis- 
astrous state of things that exists. Churches and individuals should not 
pay a single dollar to sustain such institutions until the evil is remedied. 
The same money can be much more wisely appropriated to sustain minis- 
ters that are trying to live on starvation salaries, or that have no salaries 
at all." 

So with our Colleges. Not daring to trust their young men 
away from their own influence, each sect is planting colleges 
all over the land. They are puny, half-starved things ; but 
the tax they levy on Christian people is immense. Think of 
it — Pennsylvania has six universities and thirty-three colleges ; 
Tennessee, eight universities and fifty-one colleges ; Ohio, 
nine universities and thirty-three colleges ; Missouri, two uni- 
versities and thirty-seven colleges ; and so on. At the com- 
mencement of a Minnesota university not long ago, Bishop 
Whipple said : 



84 Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 

" When I visited England I found that England, with 30,000,000 of souls, 
had but four universities — Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, and London. Min- 
nesota, with 200,000 souls, had half a score. But then it took England 500 
years to build an Oxford, and Minnesota has killed five in as many years." 

As to the efficiency of these little colleges, that distinguished 
educator, President Sturtevant, of Illinois College, says : 

" If the Christian people in any one of the great States of the West were 
a united brotherhood — to provide institutions of the highest order and the 
amplest endowments, would be as easy as to build a steam-mill where there 
is an abundance of wheat to be ground ; and they would be under Christian 
influences, of course, for they would express the heart of the people that 
founded them. And yet in the great State of Illinois, with two millions and 
a half of people, we have not one institution of learning for the higher cult- 
ure, which is at all satisfactorily endowed, and I must sorrowfully add, but 
small prospect of having one for many years to come. 

" In the present condition of the Church there can be no comprehensive co- 
operation of Christian men in such a work as that of founding and fostering 
an institution of learning. It is even a received opinion with the million — 
and many of our most influential and popular Christian ministers must in this 
matter be reckoned with the million — that no institution of learning can 
flourish unless it is controlled and managed in the interest of some one 
religious sect. If this is so, then I fearlessly assert, that in the West a 
truly flourishing institution of learning, in the present state of things, is an 
impossibility ; for our divisions are so numerous that no one of our sects 
has a sufficient combination of wealth, intelligence, and liberality to found 
and sustain one. The attempt to divide our resources among as many 
institutions as we have sects, will entail weakness and insignificance on 
them all. It is an enormous waste of men and money, which God never 
makes any people rich enough to be able to afford. If we adhere to our 
church divisions, no man can assure us of a remedy in the future, however 
distant ; for it can easily be demonstrated, that there is in our sect-system, 
a power of reproduction, which will inevitably multiply sects in a more 
rapid ratio than the increase of our wealth and our population." 

But the extravagance of this is not the only thing to be 
considered. Underneath these sectarian rivalries lies a danger 
to the Christian character of our Common Schools. Said a 
writer in the Baptist Union : 

" The Cathohc priests are powerless against a united American people ; 
but when Baptists have Baptist schools, and Episcopalians have Episco- 
palian schools, and Methodists have Methodist schools, who will be left to 
care for the piiblic schools ? Once instill into the minds of our diff"erent 
sects that their children must be educated in sectarian schools, and our 
public school system will be dead. The whole drift of sects now is to an 
intense sectarianism." 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 85 

Upon the same point, Dr. Sturtevant furthermore says : 

" Who can calcu late the importance of filling that great system of Com- 
mon School instruction, which is the glory of our American civilization, all 
full of the principles and spirit of the Christian religion ? As things are at 
present, there are thousands who cannot listen with patience to the prop- 
osition to introduce the Christian religion into our schools. They are 
ready to ask us, in tones of indignant rebuke, if we would fill our schools 
with sectarianism. The reason is, that they have so long seen Christianity 
only in sectarian alliances, that they have come to regard Christianity 
and sectarianism as interchangeable terms. I fear it is almost a prevalent 
idea, that to introduce the distinctive principles of the Christian religion 
into our schools would be to make them as sectarian as possible. Our 
religion suffers grievous wrong by such a sentiment. Its principles are 
as unsectarian as the laws that govern the motions of the planets in their 
orbits ; and yet the fear of making our schools sectarian has well-nigh 
driven our religion from the whole system of education of a Christian people. 
' Tell it not in Gath ! ' The rivalships and mutual jealousies of Christian 
sects are rapidly handing over the education of the children of the nation 
to teachers who have little faith in the Gospel. If the Christians of this 
nation were a united brotherhood, nothing would be easier than to make 
every humble school-house in the land all radiant with the light of Chris- 
tian truth. As it is, we are in great danger of having a system of instruc- 
tion for the children of a Christian people in which there is no God, and 
no Christ, and no immortality. To such a result our sectarian divisions 
are certainly tending ; and if we do not arrest this tendency, the time is not 
distant when we shall be a Christian people no longer." 

CAUSES APATHY. 

But these divisions are defended on the ground that the 
same amount of work would not be done without them ; that 
they stir Christians up, stimulate to exertion, and impart 
activity and life to religion in the West. It is a poor thing to 
say that the love of Christ, the hope of heaven, and compas- 
sion for a sinning and suffering race are not enough motive 
power for Christians, but that they must be incited on by self- 
ish interests and party spirit. Is it true? When was the 
grandest missionary work of the Church done ? It was done 
in the first and second centuries, when she was united and 
denominations unknown. 

Let us look into this sectarian activity we hear so much 
about. It makes more din among people than would a 
united church moving silently and deep. But uproar is not 
the test ; noise is not business. Jockeys make more clamor 
selling a pony than they do in Wall Street starting a railroad. 



S6 Divisions Hurt the Home Field, 

The sects are very active, it is true ; they are running here 
and there, and building and begging right and left ; but what 
does all this activity amount to ? That is the question. Prog- 
ress is more than mere activity, mere movement ; it is move- 
ment in the right direction. And are the sects moving against 
the common enemy or against each other? Elder Saxby, a 
noted Baptist pioneer, once while riding over the prairie to 
start a Baptist society at a settlement in South-western 
Kansas, passed another horseman, whom he judged to be a 
Methodist divine, evidently going on the same business. The 
Elder spurred on his horse and arrived first. Making himself 
known to those standing around, he told them he had come 
to start a church, and gave out an appointment to preach 
that evening. Soon the Methodist brother rode up, and 
accosting the Elder, whom he took for one of the villagers, 
said, " I hear that you are destitute of the Gospel, so I have 
come to start a church for you." ^' Oh, my dear sir," replied 
the other, "you are entirely mistaken ; all the institutions of 
the Gospel have been fully established in this place for more 
than two hours!" There is a great deal of such activity as 
that on our frontier — denominational horse-racing. 

Many spend their lives flitting about from one hamlet to 
another on such business. They will go to a settlement, get 
five hundred dollars subscribed for a sectarian meeting-house, 
ten per cent, paid in ; run up a debt of three thousand dollars, 
and then be off to do it elsewhere. That is called 'Hhe Lord's 
work." It is lively business certainly, but we must be careful 
not to be lively against our own friends, or we may do more 
harm than good. Like the lady at the village auction. Some 
blankets were up which seemed to take the eye of the crowd ; 
the first bid was a dollar, from a lady who was determined to 
have them. " Dollar fifty ! " cried a gentleman from the op- 
posite side of the room. " Two dollars," echoed the lady. 
" Two fifty," nodded the man. *' Three ! " screamed the lady. 
" Three fifty," rejoined the man. " Three fifty, Em offered," 
says the auctioneer. "Say four?" "Yes." "Four fifty, 
and that's all," added the gentleman. " Sold ! " cried the 
man with the hammer, " to Captain Smith for four dollars 
and a half." " Captain Smith ! " shouted the lady. " What ! 
my hiLsbandf" and raising herself on tiptoe to get a sight of 
him — " why, you good-for-nothing man, you've been bidding 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 87 

against your own wife ! " That is what our rival preachers 
are doing. They are members of the same divine family; 
their interests are identical ; and their contests are simply 
misfortunes ; the greater their activity against each other, the 
greater damage. When brothers go to law, it is not enter- 
prise, it is disgrace. Had Elder Saxby gone to that Kansas 
settlement, and stayed there, and been let alone, and built up 
the Church of Christ there — or the Methodist brother, either 
one — he would have done a good work, but both going there 
was a calamity. 

It brought discord there. A teacher instructing his class 
on the demand and supply question, asked : '' If a shoemaker 
has just enough work to enable him to live, and no more, 
what would be the consequence if another shoemaker should 
set up alongside of him?" ''A fight," responded the boys; 
which showed that the boys' heads were level on that subject. 
And when you put two religious societies among a handful 
of people scarce able to support one, you start what is — tak- 
ing the elegant phraseological wrappings off — in plain English, 
a fight. They will struggle for precedence ; they will seek to 
get out of their embarrassments by proselyting. Each minis- 
ter will advocate his sectarian views and oppose those of the 
other ; the onset will be repelled ; sparks will fly from the 
collision ; feeling and passion will be aroused, and the Body 
of Christ torn farther and farther apart. 

This is activity, we acknowledge, but it is not Gospel activ- 
ity ; it is the activity of schism and hate, the activity of tem- 
pers we ought to mortify and put down. '^ Let us consider 
one another," says St. Paul, " to provoke unto love and good 
works," but this sectarian activity provokes unto wrath and 
evil works. People sometimes talk of the pleasure of riding 
through a village and seeing the cosy little meeting-houses 
on every side. If we looked on these cosy little meeting- 
houses as God looks on them, we wouldn't make them promi- 
nent, we wouldn't put them on the corners, or put steeples on 
them. Oh, no ! we would hide them in the back streets and 
try to cover them up. For churches are not things which 
can legitimately compete like shops and stores. The church 
in a village represents the one Saviour and the one Bible — two 
churches there mean wrath and confusion, as would two post- 
offices each claiming authority from government, or opposing 



88 Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 

magistrates each assuming to interpret the law. As the Rev. 
Levin Wilson, of Indiana, very truly says : 

" So many houses are not tokens of union ; they are not signs of mutual 
love ; they do not represent the one Body, or the one Spirit, or the one 
Christ — they exhibit depravity ; they point to division ; they are voices tell- 
ing of contention and strife ; they are outward manifestations of inward 
selfishness." 

Near Balmoral Castle, Queen Victoria's summer home in the 
highlands of Scotland, is a Presbyterian meeting-house, where 
she is accustomed to worship when residing at the castle. A 
zealous and wealthy Episcopalian lately proposed to build at 
his own expense another meeting-house in the neighborhood 
for his sect. But the Queen, the head of the Church of En- 
gland, had the good sense to see there was no need of this 
and that it would do harm to religion, and at her request the 
project was given up. A queen like that in every village in 
this country would be a blessing. 

It has been said that these many sects bring more people 
to the sanctuary than a united church would. A great mis- 
take. Church-going has never been so universal among us as 
it was in early New England times, when there was but one 
meeting-house in a village. Let the Scripture plan be tried ; 
let the Christians of a neighborhood meet together, and it 
would act like a lodestone ; it would magnetize the preacher, 
and the large assembly would attract the people far and near. 
Folks always crowd into a crowd. 

And this brings us to the point of the whole matter. Our 
sectarian activity is the bestirring of the wrong parties. It is 
the activity of Bishops and Agents and Propagandists, but 
not the activity of the Christian masses. The more busy the 
sects, the more indifferent and discouraged are the people as 
to all religious enterprise. A missionary of the American 
Sunday-school Union tells about a settlement in " Egypt," 
Illinois, in which were thirty-eight families and one hundred 
and sixty children, but no preaching or Sunday-school. " There 
were a few Baptists, Methodists, Campbellites, and Presbyte- 
rians, but the majority were of no church. I could find but 
one man who would ' pray in meetin',' but he at first utterly 
refused to have anything to do with organizing a Sunday- 
school. ' It can't be done,' said he. ' It can't be done; there's 
too many different sorts of people here, and they won't gee 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 89 

together/ " That is the prevailing sentiment. Agents from 
the "Boards" make pitiful appeals on the poverty of the 
West. The West is not half so poor as they make it out. 
Not a village in the West needs a dollar from the East. The 
trouble is, Western people will not throw their money away 
on needless churches, and the needless churches go off beg- 
ging support from Christians who do not understand the situ- 
ation. A communication in the Missionary Record says : 

" The widow's mite, and the gifts of the poor seamstresses struggling 
for Hfe in a garret, help to give the Gospel to farmers who have comfort- 
able homes, and some of whom have large farms." 

The Rev. L. W. Chapman, of Michigan, speaking of one of 
these " destitute villages," says : 

" The hard earnings of the needle-woman, washer-woman, kitchen-girl, 
and day-laborer are aiding the people of that village to support their minis- 
ters in three different houses of worship, where nine-tenths of the members 
are in better circumstances than those contributing to many of the boards 
for them." 

No ; instead of inspiring zeal, our sects benumb and cripple 
it ; they are killing in the hearts of the people all enthusiasm 
for the cause of Christ ; and we wish those who defend them 
could read these words from the pen of President Sturtevant : 

" It has for many years seemed to me that the sect system has grown, at 
least in this country, to such an overshadowing magnitude, that we can no 
longer shut our eyes to its nature and tendency. The man who, in view 
of the phenomena of sect, as we behold them over the great West, a region 
so vast and so rich in resources that it is soon to contain the wealth and 
population of a mighty empire, yet cries • Peace ! peace ! ' to the distracted 
church, and tells his brethren not to be afraid, that these rivalries and con- 
flicts do not produce weakness, but develop energy for overcoming obsta- 
cles, that they increase the activity and liberality of the Church, and insure 
the preservation of the purity of Christian doctrine, by constant agitation 
and discussion — such a man seems to me beside himself. I can have little 
respect either for his intellect or his heart." 

CAUSES INFIDELITY. 

Inaction is not the worst result of our divisions in the West. 
They occasion the infidelity so prevalent there. The Rev. 
Charles C. Harrah gives the following personal testimony on 
the subject : 



90 Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 

" Scarcely a town in the Western States is relieved from the humiliating 
experience of denominational strife. In almost every one of these churches 
there is a radical sectarian element. Their denominational life or death 
depends upon these faithful ones. This is the very class that makes the most 
positive impression upon those beginning to inquire ; and the one who 
thinks and compares is soon impressed that the divisions which seemed to 
exist are much stronger than he at first imagined. In all this I am only 
describing in part the experience of my own early life in relation to religion. 
I was impressed with the number of churches, and found it very difficult to 
apologize for their existence while they all had the same Bible. While Iwas 
attempting to walk straight where the path seemed crooked, I was com- 
pletely bewildered by discovering among those who talked and prayed 
together in general meetings the most uncharitable feelings. Quietly 
they spoke of each other as ' dishonest with the Scriptures,' ' the disciples 
of traditions,' 'destitute of religious experience,' 'not having New Testa- 
ment Churches,' etc. The impression of division became painful to me. I 
knew that I could not satisfy myself which was right or wrong without a 
long, laborious study. I did not care to undertake this, and became less 
arid less disposed to unite with either party. I resolved upon what I have 
since learned is the usual course from this unfortunate cause, to treat the 
whole subject of religion with indifference. This is one way in which we 
see the fruits of denominationalism. By the fact of its existence men are 
diverted in the very time of their serious thoughts from the prime object 
of all religion, then confused, and finally overcome by indifference and 
skepticism." 

Says Bishop Coxe, of a small village in Western New York 
in which five spires point heavenward : 

" There was no settled minister in the place, just because there were five 
parties, while their united strength would have been no more than enough 
for one good strong parish. Each of the five buildings was enough to con- 
tain the whole worshiping population. There were twenty or thirty towns 
in a similar condition in that county and the one next to it. Of these five 
buildings four were shut up, locked, and barred. Only one, that of the 
Baptist, was open on a Sunday morning, and a Baptist minister drove over 
several miles from another town to give them one service, and this was all 
the means of grace now enjoyed by the whole town. I asked, when there, 
what the people actually believed in, what sort of religion they had ? And 
the answer was that many believed in spirit rappings, and others went after 
lectures on one thing or another, and heard preachers now and then ' who 
told them funny things ' and made them laugh at some of the truths of the 
Gospel of Christ. If this is to be the result of your Protestantism, the 
land is the Devil's already." 

A missionary of the American Sunday-school Union in 
Minnesota writes : 

" At W , the county seat, a village of eight hundred inhabitants and 



Divisions Htn-t the Home Field. 91 

two churches, I found representatives of six denominations, but only one 
supporting a pastor, and that for only one-fourth of his time. The other 
church had about died out. There were very few professors of religion in 
the place. The most intelligent men were infidels, according to their bold 
talk. Under the baneful teachings and influences of infidelity, intemper- 
ance holds full swa}', and bad whisky secures most of the poor man's 
money." 

A Christian gentleman writing from Kansas corroborates 
these testimonies and says : 

" Our backs are broken here, and the cause — ten religious sects. Wicked 
is the world for it." 

It is evident, therefore, that the venerable J. W. Brier, Sr., 
Presbyterian minister of California, was none too sweeping 
when he said : 

" Ask some pioneer minister, and he will tell you a bitter experience 
touching this matter. After thirty-eight years of border work and frontier 
experience, I do not hesitate to say, that sectarian strife is doing more to 
impede the progress of the Gospel than all other causes combined." 

And that recalls to mind the condition of things in San 
Francisco ; a city looking out upon China and Japan, the 
inlet of the Asiatic deluge, and one of the most important 
points for missionary operations on the face of the globe. 
There is no Church of San Francisco, but the fifty-five differ- 
ent societies are divided among twenty^ opposing sects. The 
result is, Christianity speaks with no force either to the citi- 
zens or to emigrants from Asia; and it is estimated that out 
of a population of 275,000, only 12,000, less than five per 
cent., usualty attend church at all. The Rev. Dr. Babb, writ- 
ing from there, says : 

" While there are converts in all the missions, who are really intelligent 
Christians, the great mass of Chinamen seem utterly indifferent to Chris- 
tianity." 

Summing up the whole matter, we find our entire Home 
Field, from Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate, groaning 
under a monstrous wrong that is destroying our own spirit- 
ual vigor and our influence over mankind. What shall we 
do about it ? 

TRIFLING REMEDIES. 

Some neighborhoods have tried to remedy^ the difficulty b}^ 
starting what are called '' Union,'' or, more properly, ''Allied 



92 Divisions Hurt the Home Field, 

Churches^ These are failures, and worse ; they are hot-beds 
of trouble. Denominationalists in a sparse settlement finding 
themselves, for the time, too weak to support each their sec- 
tarian club, worship together in the same building until they 
get strong enough to separate. It is not union at all, but a 
temporary truce between opposing factions. Each party being 
anxious to get control, they are jealous of one another, and 
always ready for an explosion. Many of our bitterest law- 
suits and social feuds come from these untoward alliances. 

Christ said His Church was to be a family; but this is no 
family ; it is several families in one house, and everybody 
knows there is not in all the land a house large enough for 
two families. There is no provision in Scripture for such a 
state of things. We are not exhorted, after being divided, to 
tie ourselves together. We are told not to be divided at all. 
The limbs are not to be torn apart and then clamped to one 
another ; there was not to be an alliance between the mem- 
bers. The Church was not to be a manikin with its parts 
wired together ; the members were to be one Body ; and if 
we cannot unite as Christ commanded — each one holding his 
views, and all forbearing one another in love — we had better 
keep apart, and live, as Dr. Hewit said, with a ten-rail fence 
between us. 

We need not discuss these poor make-shifts, however, for 
they never amount to anything. As soon as they grow to 
be of any consequence, the sects forage upon them until 
they die. Speaking of them, the Rev. W. W. Norton, of Min- 
nesota, says : 

" The denominations draw out of such union churches the material they 
originally contributed to it, whenever they choose. Such a case has just 
liappened in a union church whose origin and history I have been personally 
familiar with. The field has been occupied and cultivated alone by the 
excellent brother who gathered the church, until this winter, when a Bap- 
tist brother visited them, and after preaching a few evenings, passed his 
Baptist magnet through the mass, and lo ! there clung to it by the power 
of denominational attraction that element of this union church. A Meth- 
odist brother hearing of what was going on, came, and the first evening 
he passed his Methodist magn&t in the shape of a class-book through the 
remainder, and he, too, drew all the Methodist element. 

" Judgment must begin at the house of God ; this reform must begin at 
the centers of Christian influence and power. Organize union at all our 
headquarters and the various guards on the picket-line will not be long in 
shaking hands in kindred Christian fellowship." 



Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 93 

In corroboration of this, we find in an issue of the Christian^ 
a Disciple paper pubHshed in St. Louis, the following from a 
correspondent at Golconda, 111. : 

" Five Hundred Dollars. — We can buy a church-house at this point 
{ox Jive hundred dollars. The house and lot are worth, at least, three thou- 
sand dollars. It was built for a union church, but the other denominations 
have all built new houses and left this one entirely to us, and we can buy 
it and repair it for the above-named sum." 

No use wasting time on such enterprises as that. Let the 
believers of a village come together — not as Episcopalians, 
and Presbyterians, and Methodists, and Baptists, but as the 
one family of Jesus Christ. Let them expect to remain to- 
gether on earth and in heaven ; let them tolerate each other's 
peculiarities and act as one organization whose head is the 
Lord, and they will be happy and grow ; they will not, in a 
few years, be looking around to sell their property at one- 
sixth its value. 

This was the mistake made by the Secretaries of the Presby- 
terian and Congregational Home Missionary Societies in their 
attempt at coalition a short time ago. They published a 
Report, alluding to the present "wicked waste of funds," 
calling upon the people of God to " combine their forces 
against the common foe, and not waste their energies in 
mutual strife, biting and devouring one another;" and pre- 
sented a plan for co-operation in the new settlements. But it 
failed through not recognizing the real wrong. At the close of 
their Report, the Secretaries inserted the following paragraph : 

" We do not expect that either the Congregationalists or Presbyterians 
will abate their affection for their own denomination, or respect any less 
than before the good men they have been associated with. The Church 
with whose history they have been familiar; for whose prosperity they have 
labored, and in whose communion parents and friends have lived and died, 
they cannot readily forget or cease to love. We only ask them to sacrifice 
their preferences, and it may be only for a time, for the higher good of the 
whole Church, the aggregate advantage of each denomination concerned, 
and the glory of the Master." 

This, of course, neutralized it all. If our denomination is a 
church ; if it is right to love it and labor for its prosperity ; if 
co-operation is to be only for a time, looking to the aggregate 
advantage of each sect ; then our village schisms ought to be 
encouraged, and one schism has as good a right to have a 
minister and meeting-house as another. 



94 Divisions Hurt the Home Field. 

The Cincinnati Commercial suggested, not long ago, that 
the trouble be alleviated by burdening these little churches 
with State taxation, and thus putting many of them out of 
existence. And one reckless writer has even gone so far as 
to propose prayer for the continuance of the grasshoppers, 
which, as winged messengers of grace, might eat up the sub- 
stance of the people till they were ready to unite ! Small 
plasters for a large wound. The fact is, our schisms are just 
as proper in the West as in the East ; in a village as in a city ; 
among the poor as among the rich. If sects are scriptural 
anywhere, they are scriptural everywhere, and for everybody ; 
and it is scriptural to love your sect, and push it on, and 
stick to it, under all circumstances and at every cost. 

No ; these little emollients do not touch the disease. The 
Prince Imperial, the son of Louis Napoleon, once hurt his 
thigh against a wall in a riding-school. It was some time be- 
fore he spoke of it, but he began to feel pain and to limp. 
The doctors gave him powders and put on salves ; but he 
grew worse, and the greatest physician of France, Dr. Nelaton, 
was called in. Nelaton discovered the trouble ; he took a 
knife ; the Emperor demurred ; Nelaton persisted ; he drove 
in the knife ; the bystanders screamed ; he drove the knife in 
further ; he touched an abscess ; the corruption burst out, and 
the Prince was saved. The Church is hurt. She has been 
bruised against a wall — against several of them ; she is grow- 
ing worse ; our sedatives and balsams do no good. We look 
to the Great Physician ; He is ready. But what does He 
hold ? It is a knife ; and He would thrust it into the very 
center of our system. There is an inscription on that knife — 
dare we read it ? It is this : 

The evil is the existence of sects. The conscience of the Church 
must be probed until we are ready to clean them utterly away ; 
tintil we realize that it is sin to belong to themy sin to preach for 
thcMy sin to give a dollar for their support. 

Says President Sturtevant : 

" There is but one possible remedy for the evil — all others are miserable 
quackery — that is, to find out what is Christ's own conception of the 
Church, and to conform ourselves to it. To heal or to mitigate these 
wounds of the Church, while all our great rival organizations are retained, 
is impossible, and the hope of it chimerical. While we adhere to them, we 
can have nothing but the confusions and anarchies of sect, involving us in 
ever-deepening weakness before our enemies." 



CHAPTER V, 

DIVISIONS HURT THE MINISTRY. 

" Send forth Thy heralds, Lord, to call 

The thoughtless young, the hardened old, 
A scattered, homeless flock — till all 
Be gathered to Thy peaceful fold. 

Send them Thy mighty word to speak, 

Till faith shall dawn and doubt depart ; 
To awe the bold, to stay the weak, 

And bind and heal the broken heart." 

— Wm. Cullen Bryant. 

THE minister's TRUE POSITION. 

There was no happier sight than a New England village 
in former times, when the whole population belonged to one 
religious society. The church building — always the best in 
the town ; its spire out-topping the highest trees ; its pulpit 
the stronghold of piety and sound doctrine ; its chancel the 
spot where every repentant sinner confessed his faith, and 
whence every departed saint was carried to his final home ; 
its gateways the scene of neighborly salutations and cour- 
tesies—was itself a sermon for the right and a protest 
against sin. 

Such a field of labor generally secured a first-class man ; a 
man of learning and breadth, v/ho, without any sacerdotal or 
prelatical assumption, yet took the lead in everything that 
concerned the welfare of the people. He was permanently 
settled and adequately supported, and, free from personal 
anxiety or party control, worked for the good of the whole 
community. After bringing out upon the Sabbath the treas- 
ures of the law (our profoundest religious works were written 
by these divines), he went forth during the week to reprove 
iniquity and to help on whatever was moral and improving. 
He watched over the schools, inaugurated lectures, bought 
and lent books, advised between disputing neighbors, and 

(95) 



g6 Divisions Hurt the Ministry. 

counseled as to the arrangement of houses, the tilling of the 
ground, and care of the roads. The value of such a man for 
good order and prosperity, his influence upon the streams of 
young life flowing thence to every part of the world, was be- 
yond estimate. Those were the halcyon days when the Sab- 
bath was sacred and the sanctuary reverenced ; when purity 
governed at home and patriotism ruled in the State. 

The grandeur of early New England came from the dignity 
of its Gospel ministry. The result will ever be the same. 
The position of Heaven's minister determines the condition 
of the people. Make him the moral leader of the neighbor- 
hood ; secure him from the trammels of class or sect, and he 
will be our strongest defence against human greed and oppres- 
sion. The late venerable Dr. Spencer, of Brooklyn, had the 
idea. A parishi6ner met him one day hurrying down the 
street with set lip and quivering eye. " What is the matter, 
Doctor ? " The divine looked up and replied, '' I am mad ! " 
It was a new word for a mild, true-hearted Christian. But he 
went on to explain : " I have just found a widow standing by 
her goods thrown in the street — she could not pay the month's 
rent ; the landlord turned her out, and one of her children is 
going to die. And that man is a member of my church ! I 
told her to take her things back again. I am on my way to 
see him." And he saw him. A minister like that, who, not 
content with platform generalities, will oppose sin to its face, 
grapple it behind its legal defences and money-bags, performs 
a vitally important function in Christian society. It is the 
noblest position a mortal can occupy. God's throne only is 
above it. It was of such a prophet of the Most High that 
the poet said : 

" I say the pulpit in the sober use 
Of its legitimate peculiar powers, 
Must stand acknowledged while the world shall stand, 
The most important and effectual guard, 
Support, and ornament of virtue's cause. 
There stands the messenger of truth ; there stands 
The legate of the skies ! His theme divine. 
His office sacred, his credentials clear. 
By him the violated law speaks out 
Its thunders ; and by Him, in strains as sweet 
As angels use, the Gospel whispers peace. 
He 'stablishes the strong, restores the weak. 



Divisions Hurt the Mijtistiy. 97 

Reclaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart, 
And, armed himself in panoply complete 
Of heavenly temper, furnishes with arms 
Bright as his own, and trains by every rule 
Of holy discipline, to glorious war. 
The sacramental host of God's elect." 

The great ones of the earth have acknowledged the superior 
grandeur of such a ministry. Upon the return of General 
Jackson from his Presidency in Washington to his home in 
Tennessee, he was, having become converted in his old age, 
nominated as a ruling elder in the little Hermitage church. 
" No," said he, " the Bible says, ' Be not hasty in laying on 
of hands.' I am too young in the church for such an office. 
My countrymen have given me high honors, but the office of 
elder in the Church of Christ is a far higher one than any I 
have ever received." And President Pierce, once, after a State 
reception in the White House, when a long array of Senators, 
Governors, and Foreign Ambassadors had passed before him, 
turned aside to a clerical friend and said, ''After all, the man 
who preaches the Gospel and wins men to heaven, holds the 
highest office on the earth ! " 

It is of the last importance that this high position of the 
ministry be maintained. Witli deceitful hearts within and a 
deceitful world without ; with shams, plated-ware and veneer- 
ing on every side, we need one man in the community who 
can speak the absolute truth, and, getting his inspiration from 
above and not from below, can come to us with, " Thus saith 
the Lord." Nineveh's safety depended on Jonah's faithful 
speaking. So does ours. When God's messenger keeps hard 
doctrines out of view, connives at fashionable sins, and 
preaches what we like to hear rather than what we ought to 
hear, we are in double danger — of going to ruin, and going 
there in the dark. 

The greatest intellects have felt this necessity of plain 
dealing from the pulpit. Daniel Webster once said, " I want 
my pastor to tell me — ' You are mortal ; your probation is 
brief; your work must be done speedily. You are immortal 
too. You are hastening to the bar of God. The Judge 
standeth before the door.' When I am thus admonished, I 
have no disposition to muse or fall asleep." This is the feel- 
ing of every sensible man. The very heathen realized it. 

7 



98 Divisions Hurt the Ministry. 

The ancient Romans felt that their security depended upon 
setting apart one officer, the Censor, who, independent of 
every party or cabal, should fearlessly rebuke vice and put 
the mark of ignominy upon the offender. The early Chris- 
tians realized this. Their fervent prayer to Heaven was, 
'' Grant unto Thy servants that with all boldness they may 
speak Thy word." 

It is inspiring to look over the past and see the '' Legate 
of the skies " taking this his true position before his sinful 
fellows. We see Nathan, the humble prophet, saying to 
David, the powerful king, " Thou art the man." We see Paul 
before Felix the transgressor, reasoning of righteousness ; 
before Felix the voluptuary, reasoning of temperance ; before 
Felix the unjust judge, reasoning of the judgment to come. 
We see Hugh Latimer standing before Henry VHL and de- 
nouncing the sins for which the monarch was notorious. 
Consider this instance. The king, stung to the quick, sent 
for Latimer and ordered him to recant on peril of his life. 
Latimer ascended the pulpit the next Sunday, and began 
thus : 

" Now, Hugh Latimer, bethink thee. Thou art in the presence of thy 
earthly monarch. Thy life is in his hands, and if thou dost not suit his 
fancies he will bring down thy gray hairs to the grave. But, Hugh Latimer, 
bethink thee. Thou art in the presence of the King of kings and Lord of 
hosts, who hath told thee, * Fear not them that kill the body and can do 
no more, but rather fear Him who can kill both soul and body, and cast 
thee into hell forever.' Yea, I say, Hugh Latimer, fear Him." 

Then he went on enforcing what he had said before, with yet 
greater emphasis. The king was humbled ; he embraced the 
good old bishop, and exclaimed, '' There is one man left bold 
enough to tell me the truth ! " 

Proud as man's heart is, it will bow before the true ambas- 
sador from heaven. Louis XIV. favored Massillon above all 
the court preachers, because, as he said, '' When I go away 
from hearing Father Massillon I cannot help saying, '' What a 
poor wicked sinner I am." And Charles II. made Ken a 
bishop because the parish minister would not let the notorious 
Nell Gwynne, then a royal favorite, come with a party from 
court into his parsonage. The profligate monarch was en- 
raged at the time, but when afterward an episcopate was to 
be filled, he said, "Give it to the man who had the courage 
not to let in poor Nell." 



Divisions Hurt the Ministry. 99 

THIS POSITION HURT. 

This exalted stand, so needful for the purity of the Church 
and the warning of the world, is fatally hurt by our divisions. 

They misplace the minister. The various sects, each trying 
to occupy the whole territory, enter a village and plant their 
stations. Instead of a church, the place is bestrewed with 
half a dozen denominational fragments; to supply all these 
fragments with ministers, statistics are published of the 
spiritual destitution of the region (no notice taken of what 
other sects are doing) ; urgent appeals are made for more 
men, and the theological seminaries pour them forth. 

These youth are the most cultured and costly products of 
our Christian civilization ; the duty of the Church is to place 
each one of them where he can make the most of himself; 
where he can deliver the strongest blows against the great 
enemy. But see. Arrived upon the ground, the young 
minister, burning with love for souls and eager for the 
Master's work, finds that he has not been called as the village 
pastor, the spiritual guide of the community, but to further 
the interests and nourish the bigotry of a party in it ; minis- 
ters of four or five other parties are already there before him. 
He finds himself in a small building, with a few half-occupied 
pews, yet prevented from any general efforts to fill them by 
the fact that anything done outside his little circle will be 
looked upon as proselyting. He has come with a sectarian 
label upon him, and every movement he begins, every word 
he utters, every tearful appeal he makes to the impenitent is 
considered as done for his sect. 

Sometimes, at meetings in our public halls, two gentlemen 
find themselves holding tickets to the same seat. There has 
been a blunder ; they appeal to the office to have it corrected ; 
they never think of both trying to sit down on one chair. 
But our ministers have no appeal ; sent by the half dozen to 
preach where there is room but for one, they must wedge 
themselves in and get along as best they can. The result is 
inevitable ; a crowded man soon wilts ; and the minister, 
hemmed in by sectarian lines, soon loses his fire and snap ; 
his dignity, his enthusiasm die out ; he settles into a plodding 
routine of little services, hopelessly discouraged, the poor 
shepherd of a poor flock. 

He is a wasted man. And there is no compensating benefit. 



lOO Divisions Hurt the Ministry. 

The village is not better, but worse evangelized for him. 
Little places are continually clamoring for more ministers, 
because each little sectarian bigot wants one of his kind. The 
most pertinacious cries for more men come up from towns that 
are priest-ridden already, and the sects are doing their utmost 
to supply them. The result is that a large part of our town 
populations is left without spiritual oversight ; for each minis- 
ter confined to his own society through fear of trespassing on 
another sect, passes by those who belong to no society at all. 
The sparse settlements, where hardly two are of one sect, 
are mainly overlooked altogether. A clergyman meeting the 
Rev. Dr. Breckenridge on a steamboat, told him that being 
on a visit to Rushville, 111., he had found there, among a 
population of 800, nine different denominations. " Why," 
said the Doctor, " I am just returning from a rural district in 
that State, where I found among seventeen families, sixteen 
different denominations ! " Sects can do nothing at all for a 
neighborhood like that. Were our territory apportioned out 
and each minister given his field to cultivate, none would be 
neglected ; our rural churches would be generally our best 
and happiest ones ; as it is, they are generally pastorless, 
while the towns are overburdened with shepherds. 

The Rev. Isaac E. Carey, a highly respected Presbyterian 
clergyman of Ohio, has thus described the situation : 

" Sectarian divisions involve an enormous waste of minis'-erial time and 
labor. If the number of ministers, as v^ell as churches, is twice as great as 
is really needed, it follows that the labor of one-half of these ministers is 
the same as thrown away, doing nothing to advance the cause of Christ ; 
or that of sixty-five thousand ministers, more than thirty thousand are, in 
the relative sense, useless so far as the real interests of the cause of Christ 
are concerned. Nay, more ; if we bear in mind that the all-pervading 
spirit of sect creates division and consequent weakness and ill-success ; 
that the ministers of our country, representing rival parties, to a great 
extent, of necessity, work against others ; and were there unity instead of 
division, one-half the number could do more good than is now done by the 
whole ; then our conclusion must be that the labor of one-half is relatively 
worse than useless, a positive detriment to the religion of Christ. 

" The writer, who has had good opportunity for observation, ventures 
the assertion that throughout the West and Northwest — much of it now 
thickly settled and populous — the congregations average considerably less 
than one hundred. In many places the population, instead of being gath- 
ered in one congregation, or two at most, is divided among two or three, 
where there should be but one, or between four, six, or more, where there 
should be but two. And in all these places, that is, in the majority of 



Divisions Hurt the Ministry, loi 

places where the Gospel is preached, every one of the preachers, whenever 
he allows himself to look at palpable facts all around him, must feel that 
the cause of Christ does not really need him where he is, and that, if the 
church he serves with no prospect of large success as things are, were, 
together with the others in the place, to be merged in one, the united con- 
gregation would be only moderately large — none too large to be served 
efficiently by one minister ; who, being able because of the union to secure 
a more complete and effective organization for church work than was be- 
fore practicable, and having the whole field to himself and his united 
church, might prosecute his labor with a devotedness and enthusiasm he 
never felt when working for a sect, and with the certainty of accomplishing 
more for Christ than was accomplished by all the sectarian ministers to- 
gether in the same field, with their separate, feeble congregations. That is 
to say, every one of these ministers must, in view of facts, be convinced 
that, however self-denying and laborious his efforts, the kingdom of God 
really gains nothing in consequence ; that not one more victory is achieved 
for Christ, not one more soul converted ; not one more soul ripened for 
heaven ; nay, that his labor is a relative hindrance, since it might be wholly 
suspended, and his church with the others united in a new organization — 
a true Church of Christ — with the certainty of great gain to the cause of 
religion, and great benefit to the community." 

Few ministers have the courage to say this, but it is bitterly 
felt by tens of thousands. The effect on the preacher's soul 
is thus portrayed by that eminent Congregational clergyman, 
President Sturtevant : 

" If he is an able man, and fit for his work, he will carry about from day 
to day a burden of heart-sickness which can be understood only by experi- 
ence, from the consciousness that he is wasting his life ; and as he looks 
forward to the future, he will often see little hope that his field of usefulness 
can be for years to come much enlarged, except by drawing proselytes from 
the congregations of other ministers whose hearts are as sick as his own. 
And who shall draw aside the veil that covers, but does not conceal, the 
rivalries, the social intrigues, the mutual jealousies, the heart burnings, 
which such a state of things cannot fail to produce ? Here are six churches, 
where one, or at most two, would be incomparably more useful, and six 
ministers in a field so small that they can do little else than stand in each 
other's way. In the meantime the country around that village is perhaps, 
for many miles away, a religious desolation. Sect, and sect alone, is respon- 
sible for a state of facts so ruinous and disgraceful." 

Think of this waste in view of the wants of the world. 
Writing from the little town of Bethlehem, Conn., the Rev. 
George W. Banks says : 

"The Church of Christ in Bethlehem is so administered that three 
Christian ministers are required where one would be a sufficiency. Is this 



I02 Divisions Hurt the Ministry, 

dealing- justly with a world perishing for lack of the Gospel ^ The actual 
population of the town is only six hundred and fifty. The average Sabbath 
congregations of the three churches are not over three hundred. And yet 
to supply the spiritual wants of this community, three ministers must labor 
hard every week in preparing six sermons and maintaining three or four 
prayer-meetings and doing pastoral work where one man could do the 
work just as effectively, and much more so ; and thus two meii could be 
spared for other and destitute fields." 

Our brethren in foreign lands appeal to us : " We faint from 
overwork ; we cannot go forward and possess the land, we 
cannot even hold our own, unless we have recruits." Eight 
hundred million heathen are still without the Gospel, and yet, 
for the honor of sect, four ministers are in our villages doing 
the work which one could do, and doing it worse than one 
could do, hindering and getting in each other's way. Shall 
this human waste go on forever? No. Let us understand 
that it is Sin ; sin which we must pray against and fight 
against and rise up and put down as we do other works of the 
devil, in the strength of the Lord. When Dr. Duff came 
here from India some twenty years ago, he said, " it was 
almost criminal for us to be crowding a surplus of ministers 
into our small places while the Macedonian cry for help came 
up from every heathen land." And the Rev. Mr. Carey 
says : 

" What possible justification is there of this lavish throwing away of so 
much of the best life of the Church ? How can the Church answer for 
this prodigal expenditure of her resources, when from all parts of the 
heathen world hundreds of millions of the perishing are crying out for the 
bread of life — appealing for laborers to enter into the ripe harvest-fields ? 
What excellence or sacredness does this selfish, Christless spirit of sect, 
the cause of all the waste, possess, that in full view of its destroying effects 
we should maintain a bearing of indifference toward it, and permit it to 
continue its work of destruction, instead of fighting it with might and 
main, beating it down and driving it back to the pit whence it came. Let 
the Church of God purge herself of the great iniquity ! Let her arise and 
gird herself for a new and sweeping reformation ! Let the unclean spirit 
of sect, that has so long and securely possessed her, be cast out, though 
the result of the process be contortion, wounds, and cries of pain ; the final 
result will be soundness of mind and complete bodily health and vigor." 

THE QUESTION OF SUPPORT. 

To maintain a dignified position, the minister must be in 
dignified pecuniary circumstances. He will veer if rich men 



Divisions Hurt the Ministry, 103 

get a hold on him. When they were laying the first Atlantic 
cable, they found themselves going wrong ; the compass did 
not point right ; it was disturbed by the large mass of iron 
wire on board. They raised a high platform on the deck and 
put the compass there ; still it veered. Then they put it on 
another vessel to go before and pioneer, and it pointed right. 
So if we would have our ministers fearlessly point out the 
way to eternal life and keep us off the rocks, they must be 
placed independent of our common financial influences. 

Now see what happens : The neighborhood may be well-to- 
do, but the Church being divided into fragments, each frag- 
ment is poor. If a new meeting-house is required, or if the 
old one needs repairs ; if a Sunday-school building is to be 
erected or furnished, the pastor must leave his study and 
plead for the funds. Around among the shops and stores he 
goes soliciting money. If any one thinks this a furtherance 
of dignity, we suggest that he start out some fine morning and 
try it. If the clergyman fails in his effort, he is blamed for his 
want of tact ; if he succeeds, he is praised as a capital mendi- 
cant. A gentleman, after being rather closely pressed in this 
way, said to his reverend visitor : " I hope you will be long 
spared, but if you should be taken from us, I shall propose 
this for your funeral text : ' And it came to pass that the beg- 
gar died ! ' " One of our religious papers says that this func- 
tion of the ministry has become so common that a new vow 
should be added to the ordination office, as follows : 

Question : " Will you diligently beg money from house to house, to build 
church edifices from time to time, as need shall require?" 
Answer : " I will so do, the Rich being my helper." 

The worry, the wear on the nerves, the weakening of spirit- 
ual influence, and the abasement of the sacred office involved 
in this need no comment. 

But the supply question comes a good deal closer to the 
minister than this. It comes into his own home. 

This matter is very definitely provided for in the Divine 
plan. God never meant His ministers to be pinched. In the 
Old Church, not only the Priests, but the Levites, the very 
sextons of the temple, had an abundant support, a liberal pro- 
portion of all the products of the land. When the Saviour 
sent forth His apostles, He told them to "provide neither 



I04 Divisions Hurt the Ministry. 

gold, nor silver, nor brass in their purses, nor scrip, neither 
two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves." These were to be 
furnished by others, because the workman is worthy of his 
hire. Clearly, it was not the Lord's intention that a man 
should be barred the conveniences of this life for helping his 
neighbors to a better. And Paul, writing to the Corinthians, 
devotes considerable space to this point. He says it is the 
ordinance of God, that " they who preach the Gospel should 
live of the Gospel." It was not arranged that after the sanc- 
tuary services the minister should go up on Jacob's ladder to 
heaven, and stay there during the week ; he was to remain 
on the earth and be fed by those who heard him. 

To live of tJie Gospel^ moreover, does not mean support up 
to the point of bare living, the point just above starvation ; 
it means a kind and liberal provision suited to the office, such 
as other men get who are in responsible service. The minis- 
ter should be placed above want ; his income should enable 
him to be honest and hospitable and benevolent, to educate 
his children and lay by something for a rainy day. It should 
enable him to procure all the appliances needful for a public 
teacher. That eminent divine, Robert Hall, once said, that 
*■'■ he had to read the new publications and reviews with the 
greatest diligence, in order to keep abreast with the intelligent 
portion of his congregation." 

Give the minister all the aid we can, he will have hard work 
to do his duty and feed us every week with fresh and nourish- 
ing truth. Says Dr. Plumer: 

" I tell you, a pastor's labors are no child's play. I have swung the axe 
and the grubbing-hoe, have handled the plow, the cradle, and the scythe ; 
I have had to work till this stiffened arm bears proof of its severity ; but all 
this work was play, mere play, when compared to the labors of a pastor, to 
this brain work, which wears out the whole man." 

A minister distressed about his family expenses is unfitted 
for his work. He cannot study, he has no heart to preach. 
It was not in the Divine plan that he should be worried about 
these things, or his wife either. 

CLERICAL SALARIES. 

Consider now the state of affairs. Owing to our divisions, 
and each sect attempting to occupy the whole country, the 



Divisions Hurt the Ministry, 105 

number of ministers has increased out of all proportion. Were 
the church-goers of the United States divided into neighbor- 
hoods on the Scriptural plan, there would be about 25,ocx) 
parishes, amply sustaining that number of preachers. But 
the denominations have generously poured 65,000 preachers 
into the field. Of course, the supply exceeds the demand ; 
the market is overstocked ; prices are down. 

It is a strange fact, in view of the enormous increase of our 
wealth, that, the worth of money and everything considered, 
the average minister to-day does not get as much salary as 
he did a century ago. Statistics show that the average salary 
of the 65,000 ministers of the United States is $500 per an- 
num, while one-third do not get over $300 per annum. The 
average income of our trained mechanics and hotel-cooks is 
nearly double that of our preachers. We wish that the aches 
and anxieties, the tears and sleepless nights, the patchings 
and contrivings to hide rags and look respectable, the partings 
with wedding-rings, the relinquishment of magazines and pa- 
pers for the parent and of accomplishments for the children, 
the concentration of thought on the one question of keeping 
body and soul together, that are meant by these figures could 
be realized by those who read them. ^' What are you breth- 
ren doing?" asked a minister of a clerical friend in the West, 
whom he was visiting. '■^ Cannot say for the rest of the coun- 
try," was the reply, '' but around here, we are mainly trying 
to lead a thousand-dollar existence on a four-hundred-dollar 
salary ! " The very buffoons notice the wrong, and taunt us 
with it. A circus clown exhibiting not long ago in one of 
our country villages, stopped in the midst of his antics and 
propounded to his audience this conundrum : " Why is it that 
you pay more in one night to see me act the fool, than you 
pay your minister in six months? " 

But it is asked : Why do the ministers stand it ? Why do 
they not come out and revolt ? Ah, why ! Half a century 
ago, a country parish in Virginia wrote to Dr. Rice, then the 
head of a theological institution, for an able, learned, and gen- 
tlemanly minister, offering a salary of $450. The doctor made 
fun of it. He advised them to call President Dwight, who, 
having lived for some time on spiritual food in heaven, might, 
if he returned, be able to get along on that sum. But that 
was in 1825. Such a call would be no joke now. The pulpit 



io6 Divisions Hurt the Ministry, 

would be supplied without delay on its own terms. Let the 
pastor complain about his mean house, his poor fare, his few 
books ; let him threaten to resign ; the people know there are 
scores around who would come in his place for $450. Why 
should they take trouble to raise his salary when, ministers 
are so plenty and so cheap ? The man of God knows what is 
best for himself. He keeps still. Our engineers, masons, mi- 
ners, and even hod-carriers, often combine and make a stand 
for higher wages, but our ministers never strike. There are 
too many of them. 

CLERICAL REMOVALS. 

When the poor pastor finds that he cannot scrape anything 
more from the bottom of the barrel, his only resource is to 
look around for another place, and the first one that offers 
the least chance of better things, he accepts. This is repeated 
so often that the ministry of thousands of excellent men is 
spent on horseback, as it were, itinerating from place to 
place. 

A sad change has taken place in the Church as to this 
thing. The pastoral relation, like that of marriage, used to 
be a matter for life. It was established with great and prayer- 
ful deliberation. In New England, a '' settlement " was given 
by the parish to the pastor, something like the marriage 
dowry given by parents to a daughter on her wedding ; and 
parties took each other, for better, for worse, till death did 
them part. In Sprague's "Annals of the. American Pulpit," 
we read that — 

" Dr. Perkins preached in West Hartford for sixty-six years ; Dr. Lyman 
in Hatfield, fifty-six years ; Dr. Strong in Hartford, forty-three years ; Dr. 
Spring in Newburyport, forty-two years ; Dr. Chapin in Wethersfield sixty 
years ; Dr. Codnnan in Dorchester, thirty-nine years ; Jonathan Dickinson 
in Elizabethtown, forty years ; Tennent in Freehold, forty-four years ; Dr. 
Buel in East Hampton, fifty-two years ; Dr. Johnson in Newburgh, forty- 
seven years ; and Jacob Green at Hanover, forty-four years. 

" The Rev. William Williams was for fifty-six years pastor in Northamp- 
ton ; his son Solomon was fifty-four years pastor in Lebanon ; Eliphalet, 
the son of Solomon, was for more than fifty years pastor in East Hartford ; 
and Solomon., the son of Ehphalet, preached in Northampton for upwards 
of fifty years ! Father, son, grandson, and great-grandson, each pastor for 
upwards of fifty years of their respective churches, and two of them of the 
same church ! " 



Divisions Hurt the Ministry, 107 

That sort of thing is rapidly going out of date. There is a 
sectarian enterprise in Illinois, twenty-three years old, which 
has enjoyed the services of nineteen pastors, and at the last 
accounts they were looking around for the twentieth. From 
one to another such parishes as this, a multitude of ministers 
are ever wandering, pilgrims and strangers, having no contin- 
uing city or abiding place — discontented, discouraged, hu- 
miliated. 

But the frequent removals do not end the trouble. In 
these changes the minister often finds himself removed out 
of the pulpit altogether ; he finds himself on the roadside 
without anyplace to go to. The number in this situation is so 
large, that a new title has been invented to designate them : 
they are called the W. C.'s (Without Charge). The records 
show that in the Presbyterian denomination alone, there are 
fifteen hundred of these W. C.'s — ministers, a large proportion 
of whom are able and wilhng to engage in the pastoral work, 
but having no field for labor ; shepherds without sheep. 

THE AGED CLERGYMAN. 

A poor outlook this for an event not always convenient to 
defer — old age. If one mortal more than another deserves 
veneration and kindness, it is the one who has spent his best 
days in the service of the Lord's house. The aged minister 
is really better fitted than ever for valuable counsel to the 
soul. Gray-haired lawyers and physicians are always preferred 
in cases of importance. When our fortune is at stake, or our 
bodies hang in the balance between life and death, we always 
want the services of the senior member of the firm ; and when 
the minister has gained knowledge and experience, when 
he has laid aside his vealy sermons, when he has learned to 
live near to that upper world whose portals he soon must 
enter, he is best qualified to direct our own steps thither. His 
mere presence and example are worth more than the brilliancy 
of a younger man. There was a good deal in what the mem- 
bers of the Mariner's church, in Boston, used to say about 
their aged pastor : ^' We are going to keep Father Taylor as 
long as he can preach, and when he can't preach any longer, 
we are going to put him in the pulpit to look at ! " 

Alas ! we generally treat our aged pastors very differently 
from that. Dividing the Church into fragments has brought 



io8 Divisions Hurt the Ministry, 

in a new want — the want of hearers ; and the schisms are in 
sharp competition to obtain them. To fill our pews, we are 
forced to the tactics of the Lecture Hall. We require a 
preacher who can make a sensation and attract a crowd. 
Deliberate thought must make way for piquancy and wit ; 
spiritual wisdom must give place to voice and imagination. 
There is no help for it ; the old minister must go. 

It is rather trying to the one sent to tell him of his fate. 
Even the sheriff sometimes trembles as he cuts the cord. 
Worden has put it in verse : 

" Yes, wife, we think he had better go. 

The church is calling for a younger man ; 
I found it very hard to tell him so. 

And give him all our reasons for this plan — 
To tell him that his sermons are too long ; 
To tell him that his doctrines are too strong, 
And tell him that the young folks 
Seem to want a younger man. 

*• The old man spoke the service when we wed — 
Why, wife, he's been among us thirty years — 
How often he has prayed above our dead, 

How oft bedewed our dying with his tears ! 
Why, wife, our trouble gave that look of care. 
Our sorrows helped to blanch his snowy hair 
As he has mingled in our griefs. 
And helped allay our fears. 

" The parsonage must seem to him like home ; 
Its roof has covered all he had in life. 
At his age it is hard to learn to roam. 

And seek a living in the world's mad strife. 
The village precincts mark his world below. 
He only waits the Master's call to go 
To join the other greater Church, 
And enter into life. 

" What will he do ? I'm sure I do not know ; 
He never got much pay for preaching here. 
And what he got he used to squander so 
Among the poor — he was no financier. 
Now old and poor, his worn eyes nearly blind. 
The rush of progress leaves him far behind. 
Set wide the doors — the coming man 
Must find the way all clear." 

Yes, what will this worn-out clergyman do ? Who will 



Divisions Hurt the Ministry, 109 

take care of him ? Let him thank God if he has sons or 
daughters who love him. Our most successful pastors seldom 
receive enough to lay by anything. The eloquent and pow- 
erful Dr. John M. Mason, on leaving his congregation in New 
York city, said : 

" Since the time of my settlement here, lawyers, merchants, physicians, 
have made their fortunes ; not an industrious and prudent mechanic but 
has laid up something for his family. But should God call me away to- 
morrow, after expending the flower of my life, my family could not show 
a single cent for the gain of more than seventeen years' toil." 

Yet John M. Mason's salary was princely compared to that 
of most of our preachers. If he hadn't a cent for his declin- 
ing years, what have they ? 

The government of every civilized nation pensions its army 
and navy officers when they are off duty or disabled. In a 
recent speech, Gen. W. T. Sherman, of the United States 
army, said : 

" It is unjust and unreasonable to send boys to West Point at the age 
of sixteen, train them up until they are unfitted for any other profession 
than the army, and then in middle age, when perhaps they have lost a leg 
or an arm, turn them out because there is no further use for them. That 
is not the contract ; the contract is for life service. You cannot turn them 
off with honor to yourselves," 

That is the way a soldier looks at it. Yet how few of our 
sects furnish annuities in time of need for those they have 
called into the ministry. No country on earth is so indebted 
to the ministry as these United States, yet the land is full of 
clergymen broken in spirit by ill-treatment, broken by anxiety 
in maintaining their families, broken by neglected old age. 
God speed the day when the Church shall be established on 
Christian principles ! 

EFFECT ON CLERICAL STAMINA. 

The result of all this upon ministerial robustness and nerve 
may easily be imagined. Poverty and dependence are lean 
soil for the cultivation of manliness. In ten thousand of our 
little sectarian congregations the key of the situation is held 
by that most troublesome of mortals, the man with a little 
money and no religion. This man's subscription keeps the 
concern afloat, and he knows it. To him the minister is not 
a salaried officer commissioned with a responsible trust, but 



no Divisions Hurt the Ministry, 

an underling paid to do his employer's will ; he is *' the man wc 
have hired to preach for us!' We wish an artist would portray 
the clergyman before this magnate. In the Kensington Mu- 
seum in London there is a picture of Dr. Samuel Johnson in 
the ante-room of some Lord Dundreary, waiting outside his 
turn for an audience. How crestfallen is the great lexicog- 
rapher ! But it is nothing to the demureness of the minister 
before the purse which keeps him from starvation. Rank is 
never so insolent as this upstart wealth. It has the ministry 
at its feet, and is quite ready to show the fact. Let a sermon 
cut too close ; let it take the cover off some besetting sin — 
retaliation is at once made upon the supplies. There is power 
in that. Talk as you may about courage, the lion will yield 
when you starve him. The man of God would go with unfal- 
tering step to the stake ; he would stand without flinching 
before Henry VIII. or Louis XIV., but with homelessness 
before him and a half-clad wife and hungry children behind 
him, he hesitates to speak an unwelcome truth before that 
village boor. 

A report was once made on this subject to the Presbytery 
of Niagara by a committee appointed for the purpose. It 
said : 

" We have a surplus of ministers in the Presbyterian Church. We mean 
that we have more well-qualified ministers than we can employ efficiently 
and support comfortably. 

" It is manifest that many and gravis evils flow from the condition of things. 
Our churches become fastidious, conceited, and proud, like a rich dowager 
with a hundred suitors at her feet. They become restless, fond of changes, 
novices and novelties. ' Settlements ' become a misnomer, and installments 
little better than a moral farce. No salutary fear of losing a pastor pre- 
vents ill-usage. They well know that however ill they may treat a pastor, 
it is very easy to obtain another only too eager to obtain the vacant place, 
even though he may expect similar treatment after a little time. Churches 
understand that the ministerial market is overstocked. No wonder that 
the sacred calling is less revered than formerly. The independence, use- 
fulness, and respectability of the ministry are diminished. It is not safe, 
in a worldly sense, for them to proclaim boldly the unwelcome and yet sav- 
ing truths of the Gospel. They must trim and smooth away the mortify- 
ing and alarming doctrines, such as native depravity and future punish- 
ment." 

Here we find a clew to the hesitation of the clergy in speak- 
ing on this matter of union. Let every pastor in the land 
come out next Sunday with the plain truth about it, and ten 



Divisions Hurt the Ministry, 1 1 1 

thousand of them would get their " warning " before another 
holy day came round. This is not the thing said, but it is the 
thing meant, in a letter once written by the venerable Presi- 
dent of Williams College : 

"As in the conversion of heathen nations to Christianity, missionaries 
have always found the greatest opposition with the priests : so you will 
find, in moving to unite all Christians, the greatest difficulty v/ith the clergy. 
A change analogous to another change of heart, must come over ministers 
before they will enter with their whole soul into such a movement. There 
are so many interests on the side of sectarianism and a continuance of the 
present order of things, that a minister is not willing to embark in an en- 
terprise so visionary as the unity of God's people. 

"Mark Hopkins." 

The clergy are the purest and most intelligent class of our 
citizens ; it is strange that in the warfare against evils that are 
demoralizing the Church and the nation they should be in the 
rear ; but how can they be bold and aggressive when their 
own footing is so insecure, and when rival Sects wait at their 
doors ready to welcome any that are chafed ? No, prudence 
warns them not to give offense, so they pursue a mild and 
cautious course, under rather than over their people. A little 
congregation destitute of a pastor, were accustomed in prayer- 
meeting to supplicate the Lord for '* an under-shepherd." 
A plain-spoken brother once varied the usual form by pray- 
ing, " O Lord, we have had under-shepherds enough ; be 
pleased now to send us an over-shepherd ! " That good 
brother expressed a universal want. We want men distinct 
from us ; who are not afraid of us ; who are independent of 
all our parties and purses ; who can stand against sin however 
fortified or respectable, and can fearlessly speak the words of 
God from the mouth of God. We shall yet have them ; but 
it will be when our denominations are abolished, and the 
clergy are appointed to minister to God's Church rather than 
to human sects. 



CHAPTER VI. 

DIVISIONS HURT THE TRUTH. 

" Jesus, Sun of righteousness, 

Brightest beam of love divine. 
With the early morning rays, 

Do Thou on our darkness shine, 
And dispel, with purest light. 
All our long and gloomy night. 

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 

How dark it is ! What mystery on every side — the caprices 
of fortune ; the strokes of bereavement — what is the mean- 
ing of it all ! ''Where now are you going?" said the dying 
Emperor Adrian to his soul. Nature is under an eclipse. 
Twelve hundred years ago, a Christian missionary found his 
way to the Lowlands of Scotland to the court of the heathen 
King Edwin. Should he be heard ? The king was doubtful. 
At last spoke up an honest Thane : 

*' You know, O king, how on a dreary winter evening, when you are sit- 
ting at supper with your company around you, it sometimes happens that a 
sparrow flies into the bright hall out of the dark night ; flies through the 
hall and then flies out at the other end into the dark night again. We see 
him for a moment, but we know not whence he came, nor whither he goes 
in the blackness of the storm outside. So is the life of man. It appears 
for a short space in the warmth and brightness of this life, but what came 
before this life, or what is to come after, we know not. If, therefore, this 
new teacher can enlighten us as to the darkness before or the darkness 
that is to follow, let us hear him." 

The missionary was heard. 

" I am come," said Jesus, ^' a light into the world, that 
whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness." 
Jesus is the Truth ; He is the explanation of our mysteries, 
the answer to every question. The Christian does not grope 
his way ; it is plain. Travelers tell us that if you look out 

(112) 



Divisions Hurt the Truth. 113 

of a window into the streets of Jerusalem, which are very 
narrow and dark at night, you will see little stars twinkling 
here and there on the pavement. As a wayfarer approaches 
you find he has a small lamp fastened to his foot to make his 
step safe ; and then comes to mind the verse written in that 
same city 3,000 years ago, '' Thy word is a lamp unto my feet 
and a light unto my path." 

And the Dark River — what a light is the Gospel there ! 
A converted Hindoo, blind from his birth, was ever repeating 
the passage : " I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that 
he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and in my 
flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine 
eyes shall behold and not another." In his last moments, 
catching glimpses of what was before him, he exclaimed, " I 
see ! Now I have light ! I see Him in His beauty ! Tell 
the missionary that the blind sees ! I glory in Christ ! I 
glory*'! " 

And what is the Church ? She is the candlestick bearing 
this light. The inscription on the Eddystone tower, which 
for more than a century has gladdened the eye of the sailor 
on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, is : '' To give light, to save 
life." Like that light-house, the Church is built to lift up 
the Gospel, that its rays may stream out over the rocks and 
the billows. Her charter is given in these words : " The 
Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the 
Truthr 

THE ONE TRUTH. 

The Truth which the Church is to hold up is a distinct, 
definite thing. A light-house is not intended to exhibit 
paintings or cameras, or even the beautiful colors of the 
solar-spectrum. It is built to throw out one clear, bright 
light ; to make it shine as far as possible. The one thing the 
Church is to show the world is that we may be saved through 
.a Redeemer who has come to us from the throne of God. " I 
determined," says St. Paul, '' to know nothing among you, 
save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." 

This is what the Bible so often refers to as " THE TRUTH." 

We read nowhere in Scripture of " truths^ Men speak of 

''truths," separating God's testimony into parts; but God 

speaks only of Truth, one and indivisible ; for instance : '' I am 

8 



114 Divisions Htirt the Truth. 

the Way, and the Truth " ; ''The Truth of God " ; ''The Spirit 
of Truth will guide you unto all truth " ; " Belief of the 
Truth " ; " Lie not against the Truth " ; " To err from the 
Truth." When " doctrmcs " are spoken of in Scripture it is 
always as " the doctrines of men," " doctrines of devils," 
or " strange doctrines " ; whereas, on the contrary, it is al- 
ways " the doctrine of the Lord " ; " God and His doc- 
trine " ; " doctrine which is according to godliness " ; " sound 
doctrine," etc. 

This Truth marks the single issue between God and every 
human soul. As we accept it or reject it, will be the verdict 
of the Day of Judgment. It therefore has been made very 
plain ; so plain that the children, the ignorant can catch it at 
once, "The wayfaring men though fools, shall not err therein." 
We do not have to know even all the Bible to understand it. 
A city missionary once preached from the text, " God so 
loved the world, that he gave His only-begotten Son,. that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 
M'sting life." A poor wretch who heard him came the next 
Sunday again, when he preached from the words, "Being 
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord 
Jesus Christ," A third time the vagabond heard him, as he 
preached on the passage, " And you hath he quickened, who 
were dead in trespasses and sins." Soon after, the missionary 
'found this hearer dying in a garret. " I never read a word in the 
Bible," said the man ; " I never had one ; all I know of it^are 
those three verses you told us about ; but Christ come to 
save me, and I catch hold of Him ; He won't let me go." 
Inquiring further, the missionary found his mind perfectly 
deaf, and his faith decided, and he died full of happiness, 
breathing to the very last whispers of Jesus and His won- 
derful love. 

Belief in this Truth is what makes one a Christian. An 
eminent Baptist divine in Brooklyn, one Sunday not long 
ago, was baptizing a young girl in his baptistry, just after the 
morning sermon. Suddenly her father rose from his seat in 
the congregation and cried out, " What doth hinder me to be 
baptized ? " Standing in the water the minister replied, " If 
thou believest, with all thine heart, thou mayest." " I be- 
lieve," exclaimed the man, " that Jesus Christ is the Son of 
God, and I take Him for my precious Saviour ! " " Come 



I 



Divisions Hurt the Tritth, 115 

forward, then," said the minister ; and forward he went, just 
as he was, and was baptized by the side of his daughter. 

Such is the Truth — obvious, expHcit, unmistakable, that 
Christians are commissioned to preach throughout the world 
to every creature. 

On this Truth there is no division or controversy among 
Christian people. Let a dying sinner call to his bedside 
members of every denomination and ask, " What shall I do 
to be saved ? " and the same answer will come from every one, 
^' Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ." The Ameri- 
can Tract Society has been publishing books on this one 
Truth for half a century, and though made up from all the 
sects, there has never been a dispute. The Palmer Meetings 
were held every Tuesday afternoon in New York for thirty 
years ; Christians without regard to denomination attended ; 
sometimes from twenty to thirty clergymen of all names were 
seen there uniting in devotion and investigation of Scripture. 
There was no discord, for they came to study this one Truth. 

Just before the great revival meetings at the Depot in 
Philadelphia, many hundred Christian workers from the 
various denominations met for several evenings to be trained 
for the inquiry meetings. Leading clergymen of all sects 
explained the Scriptures to them in turn. Of these addresses 
the Rev. Dr. Richard Newton says : 

" There was no concert or agreement beforehand as to the points to be 
discussed, and yet the most dehghtful harmony prevailed through all the 
exercises. Not one jarring or discordant note was struck from the begin- 
ning to the end. If a stranger had been present, he might have hstened 
most attentively to the teachings of these men, representing the leading 
branches of the Protestant Church ; and, for the Ufe of him, he could not 
have detected the slightest shade of difference in their teaching. From 
anything he saw or heard there, he could not have told who was the Pres- 
byterian, the Baptist, the Methodist, or the Episcopalian. The watchmen 
on the walls of Zion were seeing eye to eye. They had approached so near 
to Jesus that they no longer saw things in the decomposed rays of their 
separate denominationalism. The pure white light that shines eternally 
from the Sun of Righteousness was shedding down its beams upon them ; 
and on that grandest of all questions, ' How shall a man be just with 
God } ' they were made ' one in Christ Jesus.' " 

And just after the revival meetings at the Hippodrome in 
New York, over four thousand delegates from the different sects 
met in convention and discussed Christianity for two days in 



Ii6 Divisions Hurt the Truth, 

perfect harmony, because they kept their thoughts on the one 
Truth. 

As to the vital thing, therefore, the essential matter of 
Christianity, we are in entire accord. Bishop Cummins once 
said of his people, " Take the rind off, and you will find us all 
Methodists within." There is more in it than that. Take the 
rind off, and you will find all these sectarians to be in heart 
Christians — ^just that and nothing more ; believers in the one 
Gospel Truth. 

HIDDEN FROM MEN. 

But the Gospel shines not only upon the dark problems of 
human life, but also into the dark cellars of the human heart, 
and the pride and passions there rise up against it. " Men 
love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." 
This makes conflict inevitable. It has been well said : 

" A Manichasan controversy, a Sabellian controversy, an Arian contro- 
versy, and a Pelagian controversy, were in the series of necessary events. 
Those controversies repeat themselves in the experience of every active 
and speculative mind. To each inquiring spirit the question comes: 'Is 
this world eternal ? or is it the work of an infinitely wise and good Creator ? 
And if so, whence come sin and death ? Is God essentially One in Three, 
or is He eternally One, and Three only in His Creative and Redemptive 
activities? Are Son and Spirit co-ordinate Deity, or only manifestations 
of the Father ? Is man ruined or only damaged by the original apostasy } 
And is he wholly or only partially dependent on divine grace for salva- 
tion ? ' 

" There is no thoughtful mind in which this whole series of controversies 
does not sporadically originate, and human nature very commonly starts 
with accepting the wrong conclusion. As old Fuller quaintly says : ' All 
men are naturally Pelagians, and think better of themselves than they 
ought ; ' so it may be said with almost equal truth that they are naturally 
Manichasans, Sabellians, and Arians, and think worse of God than they 
ought." 

In such controversies as these every Christian should take a 
part. When the Cross is assailed, we must defend it. To leave 
men in error is as bad as to lead them into it. Controversy 
is a misfortune, but it is often a necessary one ; it is not so 
great an one as false doctrine. Peace is desirable, but truth 
is more so. " First pure, then peaceable," is the Apostle's 
rule ; " Love the truth and peace " is the heavenly order. So 



Divisions Hurt the Truth. 117 

our course Is plain : " Contend earnestly," says St. Jude, '^ for 
the Faith which was once delivered to the saints." 

But our sectarian controversies are not of that sort. They 
are not the warfare of believers against the infidel, but the 
bickerings of believers with each other. They are not Israel 
contending with Moab, but Ephraim envying Judah and 
Judah vexing Ephraim. 

They are useless controversies. They are not essential to 
the Truth in any way. If not raked up. Christian people 
would never think of them. They are not about the Faith, 
but about opinio7ts. The Faith is a thing we know, we are sure 
of; it is the Rock of Ages, the same yesterday, to-day, and 
forever ; opinions are our theories or reasonings or guesses as 
to the incidentals of the Faith. " Opinion," says Plato, " is 
the medium between knowledge and ignorance." Lost in the 
woods, we come to a guide-board. The hand points straight 
there. That is the Faith. We stop and argue about that 
sign-post. What wood is it of? How deep in the ground? 
Shall we follow the direction in company, or each by 
himself? No end to questions like that. There has come 
down to us a book written by the early monks full of such 
discussions : 

" What was the shape of the wings of the Archangel Gabriel ? " 
" Did Pilate use soap when he washed his hands ? " 
" How much wine did they drink at the marriage in Cana? " 
" Are there any angels with baritone voices ? " etc. 

Our denominational questions are of that nature — mere 
asides. " Shall we be baptized with a little water, or a good 
deal?" " Shall we take the Lord's Supper sitting or kneel- 
ing?" "Ought there to be grades or equality in the minis- 
try?" "Are God's purposes to us absolute or conditional ?" 
As to any light thrown on the Way of Life by such contro- 
versies, we might just as well be whipping a top or shaking a 
rattle. They have never illustrated or developed the Truth. 
Notwithstanding the vast learning and vaster books, no sect 
has ever established anything or convinced another of its 
errors. When Casaubon visited Paris and was shown the 
Sorbonne, his guide remarked : " Here is the hall where the 
doctors carried on their disputations for over four hundred 
years." " Indeed," said Casaubon, " and what did they 



Ii8 Divisions Hurt the Truth, 

settle ? '' And so we look over our polemical libraries and 
ask, "What do they settle?" Nothing at all. God looked 
upon these questions as unworthy of notice, or He left each 
disciple to judge for himself, or He did not think us capable 
of handling them ; or whatever the reason, they were left 
undecided when the book of revelation closed, are undecided 
now, and will be undecided to the end. Says Archbishop 
Whately : 

" Many of our controversies relate to matters which our faculties are 
unable to comprehend. Could they be submitted to the decision of beings 
of higher knowledge than man, they would tell us that for the most part, 
we are disputing about words which signify no realities, and debating 
propositions which, being unmeaning, possess neither truth nor falsehood. 
If the Being who inspired the texts on which different sects found their 
arguments, had intended us to agree in one interpretation of them, He 
would not have left'them susceptible of many." 

The real importance of our discussions may be seen from 
the well-known anecdote of the Rev. Dr. Chalmers and the 
Rev. Dr. Stuart. These two great theologians, who were 
warm friends, walked up and down the streets of Edinburgh 
one whole afternoon disputing the proper technical expres- 
sion for the nature of saving faith, when at last having to part 
without coming to any conclusion. Dr. Chalmers said to his 
friend : " If you wish to see my views stated very clearly, read 
a little tract that has lately come out, called ' Hindrances to 
Believers of the Gospel.' " " Why ! " exclaimed Dr. Stuart, 
" I wrote that tract myself! " It was this very Dr. Chalmers 
who afterward said : 

" I am not aware of any topics of difference among the great majority 
of evangelical Christians, which I do not regard as so many men of straw, 
and I should be delighted if we could meet together and make a bonfire 
of them." 

'"'' What, then," it may be asked, " do theologians discuss so 
for?" It is because they like to discuss. Why do boys wres- 
tle ? A man once said : " I will go twelve miles to see two 
little brothers go to bed together without contending about 
something." Why are steers always trying their new-grown 
horns ? They have a propensity for it. The core of Christi- 
anity being plain and beyond dispute, we exercise our mental 
powers and combativeness on the shell. That is all the mean- 
ing there is to this melee among Christian believers. 



Divisions Htn^t the Truth, 119 

But while our dissensions in no way throw light on the 
Truth, they do have a mighty effect in hiding it from the 
eyes of men. They raise a dust around it. Folks look on 
and see the differences, but not the agreements. The agree- 
ments are kept back quiet in our hearts, but it is the differ- 
ences we make a noise about, and build up sects with and 
name ourselves by. It is hard to discriminate. When people 
commissioned to " Go forth and preach the Gospel " mix it 
up with a thousand other questions, folks cannot always tell 
which is the Gospel and which are the questions. The denizens 
of the sea sometimes find themselves enveloped in waters of 
pitchy darkness. The trouble is, they have come near a cuttle- 
fish. This creature (the very one whose chalky bones are hung 
up in our bird-cages) is provided with an ink-bottle, and when 
anything comes along, he opens his bottle and blackens the 
water far and near. Our sects are provided with the same 
article — abundantly so — and the seeker after light who gets 
in their vicinity, is very apt to find himself plunged in floods 
of controversial ink. As we argue our little opinions, these 
inquirers listen awhile to the noise, and then they turn away 
disgusted from the whole thing. Dr. Scudder tells of a dis-- 
pute he once heard among the trees up on the North River r 

" I found myself in what seemed an insect convention held in the forest. 
I listened, and was able to distinguish these five denominations : The first 
said, ' Katy ' ; the second, ' Katy-did ' ; the third, ' Katy-didn't ' ; the fourth, . 
' Katy-said-she-did ' ; the fifth, ' Katy-said-she-didn't.' They kept it up all 
night, and the next night, and all summer, and I suppose will go at it again 
next summer, and nobody cares a farthing whether Katy did, or whether 
she didn't." 

Just so, men turn away from our trifling discussions, and in 
turning away generally lose sight of the solemn Truth we 
were sent to proclaim. Why did the earnest and scholarly 
Emperor Julian apostatize from Christianity in the fourth cen- 
tury? History says: "He took refuge in the darkness of 
Paganism from the broils of the Christians." And that has 
been the result all down to the present day, when Brooklyn, 
our " City of Churches," has an adult population not one-third 
of which makes any profession of religion. Well did Luther 
pray : '' From proud theologians, quarrelsome pastors, and" 
useless questions, may God deliver his Church." 

When a common man goes to church, he means business. 



I20 Divisions Hurt the Truth, 

He feels the need of something that will support him in the 
hour of death and day of Judgment. He goes as he does to 
a savings-bank : he is ready to invest, but he wants a sure re- 
turn. The moment he gets among us, however, he hears this 
clatter of sects, rituals and decrees and immersions and suc- 
cessions — " They must be rival Faiths, else why rival establish- 
ments? If these learned divines cannot agree as to the Bible, 
how am I, a plain man, to understand it? It is all a muddle, 
and I don't want to join a debating society" — and off he goes 
to his Sunday newspaper, or with his children to the beach. 
What sent him off? Had the Truth been presented in clear 
outline, he would have decided for it ; but through the intri- 
cacies of partisan contention he cannot see his way. 

The venerable Dr. Sturtevant, President of Illinois College, 
has said something about this which ought to ring in the ears 
of every Christian of the land : 

" Each sect — and their name is legion — is ever bearing aloft its banner, 
inscribed with its own little peculiarities of government, ceremony, or 
speculation ; and in the contest for these the one great and only issue is, 
to the eye of the world, m a great degree lost from view. That one issue, 
when presented pure and simple, the world cannot help regarding with 
respect, and even with awe. But these party issues they cannot respect ; 
they look on them with contempt, and for that contempt no wise man will 
blame them. The unfortunate aspect under which a divided church pre- 
sents her cause, fearfully tempts millions among us to regard Christianity 
itself as a mere petty conflict of sects and parties, about matters the most 
trifling, and really to think that the wiser a man is, the more he will keep 
himself aloof from it. I cannot sufficiently pity the folly of men who take 
so shallow a view of things, and permit our great adversary so easily to 
dupe them into so terrible and fatal a delusion. Still, I cannot forget, nor 
cease to deplore, that the Church is largely responsible for this delusion. 
She holds out false colors. By her petty dissensions, and the tenacity with 
which she adheres to trifles light as air, and the zeal with which she con- 
tends for them, she diverts the attention of millions from the one great 
issue, which it is her divinely-appointed mission to present, pure and simple, 
to every human soul ; and thus she co-operates with the great adversary of 
God and man, in his work of deception. I affirm with awe and trembling, 
that while the Church continues in her present divided and factious condi- 
tion, she is a false witness to her Redeemer and Lord ; she fatally misrep- 
resents His principles and His kingdom to the millions He died to save. 
If there were no other evil of sect, this alone ought to fill all Christendom 
with shame and sorrow, and to bring every devout man on earth to his 
knees before God, to implore His help in finding out and applying a speedy 
and an adequate remedy to so fearful an evil." 



Divisions Hurt the Truth, 121 



GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE HURT. 

The harm done is not only to those outside. Sects hurt 
the Truth among Christians themselves. They interfere with 
our growth in heavenly knowledge. 

The Christian being saved, naturally wishes to understand 
more of the mighty event which has rescued him from despair. 
At the beginning he perceives only the general plan of salva- 
tion. A boy from his cottage window sees the distant moun- 
tain cut like a cameo out of the sky, but he does not see its 
cataracts and chasms, the flowers on its slopes and the mines 
underneath. So the new convert sees merely the outline of 
Calvary ; but as his eyes fix upon it, he realizes that wonders 
are there beyond his dreams ; he longs to explore them. It 
is a holy wish ; God encourages it ; He loves to have us peer 
further and further into this mystery of " God manifest in the 
flesh." It is the exhortation of the Apostle, " Grow in grace, 
and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

But sects operate against such growth. The sect is a thing 
accomplished ; it is a band of iron forged and firm ; it is the 
question answered, the dispute decided. The sect has cast 
its opinions into a creed (every sect has a creed, written or 
unwritten) and has settled investments and salaries and insti- 
tutions upon it. It is rigid, therefore, and cannot bend to 
the life that is in it. Into this inflexible system the children 
are pressed, and when the corset is once fairly on, they seldom 
get loose. A California paper, the San Diego Uiiion, tells a 
queer stor}' of a devil-fish that was drawn up from the water 
there inclosed in a bottle. The creature had evidently floated 
into the bottle when small, and finding it comfortable had re- 
mained there till too large to get out ; and there it was, its 
long arms waving around from the neck, but its body cramped 
into the bottle. Our sectarians have generally had the same 
experience — they were bottled up when young. 

" What ! May we not educate our children in what we be- 
lieve? Are we not co7nmanded to teach them?'' Yes and no. 
We are commanded to teach them the Faith — that question- 
less Truth which is of eternal value to their souls, but we are 
not authorized to train them up in our sectarian opinions. It 
was the Faith which Paul was so glad to see in young Tim- 
othy, and which had come to him from his grandmother Lois 



122 Divisions Hurt the Truth. 

and his mother Eunice. It was the Holy Scriptures which 
Timothy had known from a child, not partisan theories. Says 
the great Chillingworth : 

" The Bible, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants. Whatever 
else they believe besides it, and the plain, irrefragable, indubitable con- 
sequences of it, well may they hold it as a matter of opinion ; but as a 
matter of faith and religion, neither can they with coherence to their own 
grounds believe it themselves, nor require belief of it of others, without 
most high and most schismatical presmnption." 

And yet, what are our catechisms? They are documents 
in which sectarian surmises and human definitions are bound 
up with the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and 
given all alike to the little ones. 

It is poor stuff to nourish religion upon. The Senior Tyng 
never said a better thing than once, when denouncing this 
denominational teaching in our Sunday-schools, he exclaimed : 
** Why, bless your hearts, you can't feed the lambs of the flock 
on chopped fence-rails ! " 

But such teaching is not only dry, but hurtful. The tender, 
confiding mind of the child makes no discrimination. It takes 
in the Word of God and the word of man in the same way. 
On our bridal envelopes the initials of both parties are 
wrought into a monogram generally so mixed, that you can- 
not tell which letters are uppermost and which are undermost, 
nor where one begins and another ends. Our denominational 
conceits are put into the mind of the child along with the 
Gospel in just that way — interwoven and inseparable. Con- 
sequently, he holds on to his "views" as tenaciously as he 
does to Christ. There is no further investigation, for his 
opinions are firm as his faith. This is all wrong. We ought 
to wear our opinions as we do our clothes, ready to change 
whenever we outgrow them or get better ones. Our horses 
now know just as much as the span did which came out of 
the ark, not any more. Why? Horses never change their 
opinions. Thinking men change theirs every day, shift and 
modify them at every step, as they get new light. " No wise 
man," says Cicero, " will ever impute a charge of unsteadiness 
to another for having changed his opinions." 

The trouble with one trained as a sectarian is, adopting his 
peculiarities along with the Faith, he makes them matters of 



Divisions Hurt the Truth. 123 

conscience. You will hear him continually say, '' I am con- 
scientiously attached to my opinions." What right has he to 
be conscientiously attached to his opinions ? Opinions are 
not matters for the conscience, they are matters for the judg- 
ment, to be held day by day according to our information. 
The only function conscience has with them is to make us 
conscientious in hearing all sides and knowing the whole 
truth. Suppose a judge should hear one side, and then say 
he must conscientiously pronounce in its favor ! Yet that is 
what the sectarian is doing all the time. He says, '^ From 
what I have heard and read, I cannot in conscience but draw 
these conclusions." Very likely. But if his conscience came 
in the right place it would lead him to hear other opinions 
and read other books before he made up his mind, and then 
to make it up conditionally. Conscience never investigates, 
never discovers truth ; it goes as it is taught to go ; to go 
right it must be directed by an enlightened reason and un- 
derstanding ; whip it up before you have gained this knowl- 
edge, and you will be run away with by a blind horse. The 
fact is, a great deal of this *' conscientious attachment " we 
hear so much about is a mere excuse for ignorant and obsti- 
nate self-will. A negro, very strong for his sect, and always 
backing it up by his conscience, was once questioned on the 
subject. " Pomp, what do you know about conscience — what 
is conscience ?" " Conshuns, sah — what is conshuns ? Con- 
shuns (here Pompey drew himself up with his hand on his 
breast) " is dat feeling in here what says, ' I WONT.' Dat's 
conshuns, sah ! " Conscientious sectarianism is generally of 
that sort. 

With his conscientious bias thus fastened to him, like green 
spectacles, the sectarian looks at everything through the color 
of his party. You cannot teach him anything. He despises 
other opinions because he has not examined them, and he will 
not examine them because he despises them. Yes, he is 
fixed. Like the soldier at the battle of Preston Pans, he goes 
for Hamilton regiment, right or wrong. " I am," said a good 
Scotch Presbyterian, " open to conviction, but I should like 
to see the man who can convince me." Some years ago, the 
Hon. Wm. H. Seward called the attention of the United 
States Senate to the fact that when a certain Episcopal 
bishop was tried for moral delinquency, exactly the number 



124 Divisions Hurt the Truth, 

of bishops who belonged to the same theological party as the 
accused, believed him innocent, while all the others pronounced 
him guilty. What chance has truth before minds like that ? 
Hear what a Presbyterian divine, the Rev. Dr. McGaw, says 
about it : 

" As matters now stand, each denomination considers itself set for the 
defense of some particular system of doctrine or church polity. The mem- 
bers, but especially the ministers, consider themselves under obligation to 
defend the pecuharities of their respective denominations. 

" It is manifestly absurd to say that, as a rule, they have arrived at theii 
views of these matters after a fair and impartial investigation. So far as 
the private members are concerned, the large majority have given very 
little thought to denominational peculiarities. They are Presbyterians, 
Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, simply because they have been brought 
up in that way. 

" As to the ministers, they have looked into these matters to some extent, 
but in general there has been very little that could be properly called im- 
partial investigation. In almost every case there has been a strong bias in 
favor of that particular system of doctrine or church order in which the 
candidate for the ministry has been educated. 

" Instead, therefore, of an investigation impartially conducted with the 
simple purpose of finding out the truth, there has been, in most cases, a 
search after proofs in favor of the doctrine already embraced. Instead of 
coming to the Bible with an open mind to receive the truth, whatever it may 
be, there has been a determination to find what the seeker wanted to find. 

" It is easy to see what men expect and want to see. Hence, Presbyte- 
rian students of theology, under the guidance of their theological professors, 
almost invariably find in the Bible the entire system of Presbyterianism — 
doctrines, church polity, and all. In like manner. Baptist students find 
ample support for all the peculiarities of their denomination. And so on, 
to the end of the chapter. It is a rare thing for a man to depart from the 
views in which he has been trained at home, in college, and in the theo- 
logical seminary," 

Thus is our reach after the infinite Truth hindered. The 
sectarian student, with his text-books all about *' our denom- 
ination " and '' our usages," has his vision sharpened within a 
certain radius, but is obstructed from large and sublime ideas 
of the Redeemer's kingdom. The riches stored in other 
fields he knows but little about. From his narrow walls, with 
his narrow education, he goes to minister to a flock narrow as 
himself. Brought up within the same fence-rails, they do not 
discover his deficiency. " Our boys," once said good old 
Bishop Meade, of Virginia, rather saucily, " our boys are 
very poorly educated, but our girls will never find it out ! " 



Divisions Hurt the Truth, 125 

RANGE OF KNOWLEDGE HURT. 

Knowledge of the Gospel requires not only freedom to go 
forward, but freedom of range. To understand a mountain, 
we must not only go to it, but go around it. We must study 
all the sciences — Botany, for its flora ; Geology, for its strata ; 
Mineralogy, for its metals ; Physical Geography, for its action 
on the winds and currents, etc. So the Gospel is a wide study. 
How long it took, and how many men it took to make the 
Bible ! There is but one Truth all through, but as St. Paul 
says, *' God spake at sundry times and in divers manners unto 
the fathers by the prophets." You may pour water into a 
thousand different vessels — round, square, tall, short, six-sided 
and seven-sided, but while it is the same water, it will take 
the peculiar shape of each vessel ; and the writers of God's 
Word all tell the same Truth, but all hold it up in a different 
way. As we change from one writer to another, it is like 
turning a kaleidoscope around. There is no alteration in the 
materials, we know, yet each new position reveals some new 
form of beauty. 

So we see Peter ^ with his favorite view of the Cross as a re- 
demption from the lusts of the natural heart ; John, with his 
fondness for the regions warmed by the divine love ; James, 
with his practical eye upon common duties and moralities ; 
and Paul, delving into the doctrinal treasures underlying the 
whole. In the library of the Smithsonian Institute at Wash- 
ington, there is a volume on the history of paper, published 
in Bavaria in 1765, the pages of which are specimens of the 
different fabrics used in the manufacture of paper. Some are 
textures of various kinds of straw, others of the bark of trees, 
others of moss, hemp, grape-vines, sawdust, hornets' nests, etc. 
The Bible seems to have been made in the same way, so het- 
erogeneous were the processes of its construction. 

Thus it comes about that the facts of the Gospel have dif- 
ferent sides to them. Each is a gem with many faces ; turn 
it round and round, and each turn will give a new lustre. 
" Christ " — how many sides to that word ; the God, the Man, 
the Burnt-offering, the Sin-offering, the Prisoner before Pilate, 
the Judge of the world. Sometimes we have the exactly 
opposite sides of a fact — the convex side and the concave 
side. St. Paul and St. James present faith in that way. They 
do not contradict, but supplement each other ; and to know 



126 Divisio7is Hurt the Truth. 

the matter thoroughly we must comprehend both. We must 
not prefer the one side to the other, or qualify one side by the 
other, but take each in its fullness. The Truth does not lie 
between the extremes, but in the extremes, and by studying 
what all say, we get it in its symmetry and completeness. 

Thorough knowledge, therefore, requires the total revela- 
tion. God has not revealed a single thing which can be com- 
pletely stated or defined in less space than the whole Bible. 
Every fact is connected with every other fact ; and to know 
a fact out of its relation to the others is to distort it. Settle 
down to one aspect of the Truth, and you will become a 
bigot. Luther forgot this, and made thereby the mistake of 
his life. He stationed himself before Paul's presentation of 
faith and dwelt upon it intensely. This caused him to neglect 
James' presentation of it, then to despise it, and then to pro- 
pose that the Epistle of St. James be ruled out of the Bible 
as "an epistle of straw!" Sign-boards are sometimes made 
with slits, so that people down street read one thing and 
people up street read another thing, and when you come in 
front you read it different from either. Had Luther gone 
along and studied the doctrine from every point of view, he 
would not have fallen into such a blunder. Let a man con- 
fine himself to any insulated statement of the Bible ; no mat- 
ter how beautiful or precious it may be, and he will lose the 
proportion of things and fail of the Truth. 

This is the misery of sects. None of them but what have 
some basis of right ; but that basis is partial. A certain doc- 
trine has become neglected ; some one notices the fact, and 
sets out to call attention to it ; he and his followers make it 
their specialty ; they wall off the class of texts about it from 
the rest of revelation, and cultivate them exclusively, until, at 
last, that feature of the Truth becomes the Alpha and Omega 
of their faith to the neglect of almost everything else ; they 
organize upon it, and make it the symbol of a permanent 
party. 

The result of this sectarian grouping, this cantonment of 
men on one side of the mountain, is inevitable. A boy never 
away from home thinks his village spire the highest in the 
world ; and these Christians, shut up to one class of compan- 
ions, one set of books, and one way of looking at things, 
magnify their hobbies out of all sense and proportion. Their 



Divisions Hurt t.he Truth, 127 

hub is the center; God's providences all revolve about them ; 
His rivers were made to flow past their towns ; their chip 
from the wall is the temple ; their creed is the summary of 
truth ; their slice of the cake has the gold ring ; no water of 
life but what comes from their tub ; nothing in the universe 
worth mentioning but what is seen from their pin-hole ; and 
they pray like the good fisherman on a rock of the Firth of 
Clyde, who in asking protection for his little domain, usually 
besought the Almighty "also not to forget the adjacent 
islands of Great Britain and Ireland ! " 

The inhabitants of Switzerland, who dwell in the secluded 
gorges of the Alps, are afflicted with wens and goitres ; many 
Christians are deformed through the same cause. To be 
cured, they must get out of their narrow valleys, associate 
with other kinds of Christians, and look on things from dif- 
ferent standpoints. It is found that the insane are wholesome 
society for each other; they notice each other's errors, and 
often frictionize them away. When a lunatic sees another 
cHnging to some vagary, he begins to suspect his own fancies. 
We venture to say that let us make up a party of our closest 
Baptists, sturdiest Episcopalians, and most angular sectarians 
generally, and send them together on an excursion round 
the world, hardly a " point " would be left by the time they 
got back. 

There is nothing like travel. Not a Christian we meet but 
could teach us something. Says Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton : 

" Have you ever entered a cottage, ever journeyed in a coach, ever talked 
with a peasant in the field, or loitered with a mechanic at his loom, and 
not found that each of those men had a talent you had not, knew some- 
thing you knew not? " 

At a recent Assembly of the Southern Presbyterians, Dr. 
Stuart Robinson said : " We are making a mistake in isolat- 
ing ourselves too much from the Christian world." It is the 
case with all denominations. We do not have scope enough 
in any of them. Let us get outside of these walls, and study 
the Truth freely in whatever way God may show it to us ; 
study it as shaped by every sacred writer and as it works out 
in the experience of all God's children ; let us get into sym- 
pathy with the ignorant and the learned, the emotional and 
the sedate, and see the Truth as it breaks forth here in the 



128 Divisions Hurt the Truth. 

shouts of the camp-meeting and there into the strains of the 
cathedral, sending one out into the street to talk and another 
into his chamber to think ; let us reach out beyond all enclos- 
ures for the infinite breadth and bearings of this Fact which 
our babies know and which archangels cannot compass — this 
Truth so simple, which branches into infinity and touches every 
star — and it will enlarge our minds and hearts, until, too big 
for human thongs or sects, ''we come in the unity of the faith 
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." 

DEVELOPMENT HINDERED. 

The Truth in itself is unchangeable, but our understanding 
of it should ever be advancing. Every age of the Church 
ought to see clearer and know more than the preceding one. 
New discoveries should be continually made in the Gospel 
mine. In chemistry, men formerly knew but four elements ; 
now they have discovered over sixty. So, from the simple 
views of the Primitive Church there has been a steady devel- 
opment of religious knowledge to the present day ; and this 
progress should always be going on. But the sect is an ob- 
struction. Its opinions are stereotyped ; it resists all changes, 
even though they are corrections. " I once," said the Rev. 
John Newton, " went to light my candle, but could not. 
Why? There was an extinguisher on it!" The sect is an 
extinguisher on further light. 

Strange to say, this suppression is often admired. Every 
year we bring new inventions into our factories, new medicines 
into our sick-rooms, and new text-books into our schools ; 
but in our creeds, our religious opinions, we oppose any 
alteration. Men will come to town every day by railroad, 
transact their business by telegraph, and read all the evening 
by the glow of the gas, and yet boast that they belong to a 
sect which is just the same as it was three hundred years ago. 
The trappings of such a sect may be all veiy fine and grand ; 
but did we realize what a blind it is to the Truth, we would 
say to it, as Diogenes did when overshadowed by Alexander 
the Great, " You are between me and the sun ; please stand 
out of the light." 

A notable instance of the obstruction of sects to the devel- 
opment of truth, is their interference with the translation of 



Divisions Hurt the Truth, 129 

the Bible. As the " pillar and ground of the truth," it is the 
duty of the Church to see that the original Scriptures are 
faithfully translated into our common tongues, and that these 
translations are revised, from time to time, as new informa- 
tion is received. It was a translation of the Hebrew Old 
Testament into the Greek called the Septuagint, from which 
our Saviour and His Apostles generally quoted. From the 
year 1360, when John Wickliffe first translated the Bible into 
the English language, to 161 1, when our present version was 
made, there were eight successive translations, each an im- 
provement on the preceding one. To these constant labors 
is due the wonderful excellence of our English Bible. But 
while in the 251 years before our present English version 
there were eight corrected editions, in the 267 years since 
there has not been one. In the meantime, many words have 
become obsolete ; many have changed their meaning ; and 
many have, by subsequent research and discoveries, been 
proved incorrect. Of course, we ought to have a new revision ; 
we ought to have had it long ago. What has been the hin- 
drance ? Sectarian jealousy. No one sect would allow another 
to do the work, and they would not join to do it together. 
To millions of Christian readers God's message is thus blurred 
by our dissensions. In our extremity, a number of Christian 
scholars in Great Britain and America have volunteered to 
make this needed revision, and for years they have been en- 
gaged in the work. Most sacred and important responsibility ! 
Unceasing prayer should be offered for them and every 
encouragement given them to lay aside fear and predjudice 
and to search for the exact meaning of the Spirit. But what 
do we see ? Our sectarian leaders standing sullenly off, lest 
the new revision may hurt their denominations ! At every 
step, we are told, the Revisers are hindered by fear that some 
sect may take offense. The Rev. Dr. Van Doren, writing 
to the New York Observer, thinks that " the new revision, 
though conducted with the most conscientious care, by our 
best scholars, will not, however excellent it may be, meet 
with general adoption." He apprehends that " the various 
denominations, having been built on the present translation, 
will unite against any revision whatever, and prevent its 
acceptance." As if this were not injury enough to the 
Truth, one sect, in order to forestall a fair revision, 
9 



130 Divisions Hurt the Truth. 

has already hurried through a one-sided version in its own 
interests. 

PARTY ZEAL. 

This is another foe to the Truth. Nothing hinders us from 
freely following the Divine Light so much as having an inter- 
est in established opinions. However certain or beneficial a 
new fact may be, we are slow to adopt it, when underneath 
all proofs there is the feeling of Demetrius : '' This craft, by 
which we have all our wealth, is like to be set at nought." 
And the greater this selfish interest, the more determined our 
persistence. Thus we often see men joining a sect in the most 
casual way, yet becoming popular and raised to of^ce, flaming 
up into enthusiastic partisans. It is what the French call 
Esprit de corps. Poisoned with it, we can no more candidly 
examine things than we can appreciate a sunset when suffer- 
ing with the yellow jaundice. This was what ailed the Phari- 
sees when dealing with Christ. They were so blinded by 
party zeal that they really never saw Him. 

It is a common remark among the Episcopalians : " A man 
always tones up after being made a bishop." A well-known 
instance may be mentioned : Many years ago there was in 
New York an humble-minded Episcopal minister, who was 
noted for his freedom from airs and pretension, and for lead- 
ing men's minds away from ecclesiasticism to the Saviour. 
He was one of the founders of a society organized to oppose 
prelatical assumption. The early records of that society bear 
his name on every page. But in an evil hour he was elected 
Bishop of Illinois, and from that moment he was a different 
man. He now seemed devoured with passion for his party. 
He preached Episcopacy ; he spoke of his little sect as '' The 
Church;" he fancied himself the spiritual lord of Illinois, and 
styled his little meeting-house " The Cathedral ; " and when 
Mr. Cheney dared to omit a Popish expression from the 
prayer-book, he rolled down on him the avalanche of his 
Episcopal condemnation. 

The fault here was not so much in the man as in the mitre. 
He was demoralized by party elevation. Almost any man 
will lose his feet when lifted by a sect on the topmost wave. 
Take the best of us, put a crosier in our hands, and D.D., 
LL.D., D.C.L., Oxon, Cantab, after our names, call us sue- 



Divisions Htirt the Truth. 131 

cessors of the apostles and channels of heavenly grace, sur- 
round us everywhere with a little band of worshipers, and 
how many of us could stand ! We were not made for it. 

Whoever would remain a servant of Truth should beware 
of the gifts and titles of party. It is an understanding among 
the leading thinkers of the Old World, that to maintain their 
independence, they must accept no such honors from the pow- 
ers that be. In France, Louis Phillippe created Guizot and 
Thiers dukes, but they both refused the title. In Great 
Britain, the Throne has offered titles and baronetcies to 
Southey, Grote, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Thomas Carlyle, and 
they all declined them, lest such distinctions from royalty might 
fetter their perfect freedom of expression. This is a wholesome 
fact for us to remember in this day, when sects which have 
no right to exist, are so profuse in bestowing titles we are for- 
bidden to receive. 

SECTARIAN BISHOPS. 

But our denominational magnates not only hinder the 
Truth in themselves, they hinder it in the world. Look at 
the office of sectarian Bishop. Its principal function seems to 
be to prevent any doctrinal life or growth; to keep the cere- 
ments tight, and the party forever .embalmed. In the Romish 
sect we see a long line of these bishops, men set for the de- 
fense of the status quo, men who never headed a reformation, 
never opened the Bible to mankind, never did anything but 
flatter the Pope and guard the despotism. In the English 
hierarchy we see them, as a class, opposing the separation of 
Church and State and all religious progress whatever. 

See their influence on the Prayer-book. This book, con- 
taining treasures of ancient devotion of almost inspired beauty, 
which might be of use in every part of the Church, is damaged 
by certain errors which crept in when Protestantism had its 
eyes but half open. Before these errors stand the bishops 
determined they shall not be touched. And so, while the 
institutions and laws of England are being continually modi- 
fied and improved to suit the times, the English Prayer-book, 
like the English translation of the Bible, has not been cor- 
rected for centuries. At any time, during the past struggles 
of reform, the rectifying of a dozen words would have pacified 
a hundred thousand dissenters — the words have not been 



132 Divisions Hurt the Truth, 

rectified. Eminent and godly men, like Richard Newton and 
William A. Muhlenburg, have begged American bishops for 
liberty to use alternate phrases ; the liberty has not been 
granted. In the lower part of the city of New York a wide 
avenue has been opened for the convenience of that crowded 
section. It is called ^'Church Street!' But its progress is 
stopped right in the midst by a miserable vestry house be^ 
longing to the Episcopal corporation of Trinity, which will 
not allow its useless bricks to be touched, though they inter- 
fere with the commerce of a continent. As with Church 
Street, so with Church truth ; its advance is stopped by sec- 
tarian authority. In many of our Episcopal sanctuaries w^e 
see the minister laboring for the Gospel in the pulpit, while 
the Prayer-books in every pew, with their errors maintained 
by the bishops, are preaching with a hundred tongues against 
him. 

But we must not confine our view to Episcopal bishops ; 
while they make most show in that sect, they really exist in 
all. The party requires a worldly organization, and this or- 
ganization is under the control of a few at the centers of 
influence. Bishops are indispensable to a sect, and all have 
them under one name or another. Our most stubborn auto- 
crats and obstructionists are often found in sects which de- 
nounce all hierarchies. They are bishops only without a mitre, 
men who will never permit any forward step of truth in their 
denominations, who will resist the unity of the Church so long 
as they can move tongue or pen against it. 

The clogs that these sectarian oligarchs are to religious 
progress, may be appreciated when we remember how the 
truth alw^ays comes. New discoveries never dawn on eccle- 
siastical assemblies or institutions ; they come in an unex- 
pected hour to some secluded individual. It may be a de- 
spised and rejected Christian to whom the light is given of 
which every other Christian stands in need. The secret of 
the New Birth is revealed to Nicodemus by night ; the key 
to the worship of the ages is given to a disreputable woman 
standing by a well. Peter, at the very start of the Christian 
Church, is taught that he must be willing to learn from a 
heathen centurion. For years the idea of a Western Conti- 
nent was in the brain of Christopher Columbus alone, a wan- 
dering maker of maps, and bishops sneered at it. From his 



Divisions Httrt the Truth. 133 

attic, Galileo peers into the heavens with a telescope and 
discovers the real system of the stars, and bishops put him in 
prison for telling it. This is ever the way that truth makes 
its first appearance. Like its Lord, it is born in a manger, 
and is wrapped in swaddling clothes, and flies to Egypt, and 
then back to Nazareth, and has not where to lay its head. 
Our Government, knowing that inventions and discoveries 
usually come from poor and solitary men, encourages them 
with patents and rewards ; our sects wall themselves up 
against such dangerous characters, and station their most 
faithful minions to cast them out — and who can tell how 
many, bearing truths profoundly important to the develop- 
ment of Christianity and the welfare of man, are struggling 
and suffering to-day before these partisan henchmen ! 

BROAD-CHU RCHISM. 

We cannot realize the wrong done to the Truth by our 
divisions, without considering the inevitable rebound. While 
our sects are quarreling about forms and ambiguities, another 
class of thinkers, disgusted with such narrowness, go to the 
other extreme of Broad-Churchism. 

Broad-Churchism is the swing of the pendulum away from 
bigotry. It is not liberality, but indifference ; it is baptized 
skepticism — Sudduceeism with a Christian name. Wherever 
you find a Pharisee stickling about his rites and traditions, not 
far off you will always find a Sadducee, despising not only these 
little things, but also the weightier matters of the law. Christ 
is generally crucified between them both. While the Pharisee 
is enforcing his opinions, the Sadducee, annoyed at the clamor, 
asks with Pilate, "What is Truth?" and washes his hands 
of the whole thing. The modern Pharisee ranks his opinions 
along with the Faith. The modern Sadducee — the Broad 
Churchman, says : " Neither faith nor opinions are of any 
consequence ; one faith is as good as another, and none are 
worth contending for ; it makes no difference what you be- 
lieve. The true philosophy is — take it easy ; make yourself 
comfortable wherever you are. Make your preaching satisfy 
your people. Doctrines are fancies ; the substantial blessing 
is a good salary." 

That servant-girl was of the Broad-Church persuasion, who, 
being questioned by her mistress as to her religion, replied : 



134 Divisions Hurt the Truth. 

" Oh, ma'am, I'm always the same religion as the folks I live 
with." And that Alabama teacher was also a good speci- 
men, who, being asked at his examination before a school 
committee, "Do you think the world is round or flat?" an- 
swered : " Well, some people think one way, and some another, 
and I'll teach round or flat, just as the parents please ! " 

The great modern apostle of this sect was a certain Romish 
priest, the Vicar of Bray. During the reign of King Henry 
VIII., this renowned clergyman presided over the parish of 
Bray, some thirteen miles north of London. It was con- 
venient to the city, the residence of many wealthy people, 
paid a good salary, and was, altogether, a very quiet and com- 
fortable home in those troublous times. The Vicar deter- 
mined to hold on to it at all hazards. When the King turned 
Protestant, the Vicar turned Protestant with him. When 
Edward came in, more radical than Henry, the Vicar intensi- 
fied his Protestantism. When Bloody Mary succeeded to the 
throne, he went back to Romanism, and began again to say 
his masses. When Elizabeth took the reins, the Vicar quietly 
lapsed again, and kept pace with the Queen's impetuous 
Protestantism. When reproved for his want of principle in 
changing his religion so often, he was accustomed to say, 
with the utmost good humor, '' I have, indeed, changed my 
religion, but aot my principle, which was always — to live and 
die the Vicar of Bray ! " His followers are noted for being in 
the cosiest nests of the Church, and keeping to them with 
remarkable fidelity. Polite and bland, often scholarly and 
eloquent, they rub against no sharp corners and excite no 
opposition. Unbelievers in heart, caring nothing for the 
Truth in itself, they render none of their hearers uncomfort- 
able, never allude to hell, never rasp the consciences of the 
worldly, covetous, decent sinners before them, and as the 
pews make it easy for them, they make it easy for the pews. 

The rapid increase of these men among us is an important 
sign of the times. They already abound in every denomina- 
tion, and are growing more and more acceptable to our people. 
Their worldly success secures them the popular praise, and 
they are held up to our youth as models of prudence and 
wisdom. Their prosperity really marks the degradation of 
the Truth among us, and is a solemn warning to the Church. 
Says the Christian Intelligencer : 



Divisions Hurt the Truth, 135 

"For some years past it has been a discouraging characteristic that 
large audiences have been drawn together and held by a style of preaching 
that disparages and oftentimes ridicules evangelical truth. A great con- 
gregation and a popular speaker have, too frequently, been equivalent to 
reckless teaching and reckless hearing. The masses have been told that 
theology is a skeleton, and should be buried out of sight with other skele- 
tons. Distinct and definite statements, especially those that relate to man's 
guilt and danger, to the wrath of God, and the necessity of fleeing from it, 
have been stigmatized as dry bones. That incorrigible jester, Sydney 
Smith, told an old lady who asked him how he managed to ke^^p cool dur- 
ing the very hot weather, that he took off his flesh and sat in his bones. 
These preachers reverse this method. They take out their bones and sit 
in their flesh. And what a mess they make of theology ! What a flabby 
pulp is their sermonizing ! " 

A late visitor in London went to hear one of these Broad- 
Churchmen, and thus writes : 

" In the evening, I heard a Mr. Picton, a Congregationalist minister, who 
preaches in St. Thomas', Hackney, and who occupies a pulpit which for 
generations was distinguished for its evangelical faithfulness, but which is 
now made a platform for Broad-Churchism. He treats the story of Adam 
and Eve, and that of Elijah, and all those, in short, in which there is any- 
thing of the marvelous, as so many legends. ' You may believe them if you 
like,' he says to his people : ' I don't ; and I am none the worse. But jyou 
will be none the worse either if you can take them in, and I beg you won't 
mind me in the matter at all.' A more serious defect is that in his preach- 
ing he simply ignores the great facts of sin and guilt, and divine justice and 
retribution, and thus leaves unsolved the problems which press most 
heavily on human hearts." 

The time has come for the Church, as the pillar and ground 
of the Truth, to unite in its defense ; to vow, in the strength 
of Heaven, that the Holy Bible, the Light of perishing man, 
shall no longer be hidden in the dust of useless discussion, or 
trodden under-foot by a contemptuous infidelity. 



CHAPTER VII. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR ONENESS. 

One family we dwell in Him, 

One Church above, beneath. 
Though now divided by the stream, 

The narrow stream of death. 

One army of the living God 

To His command we bow ; 
Part of the host have crossed the flood, 

And part are crossing now. 

CHRISTIANS REALLY ONE. 

In the remote antiquity of Egypt there was a legend that 
Osiris, the god of benevolence, was slain by Typhon, the god 
of hate, and his body hewed to pieces and scattered to the 
four winds ; and that Isis, the wife of Osiris, from that time 
wandered up and down in search of these mangled remains, 
that she might put bone to bone, and sinew to sinew, and 
restore again the form that she loved. This story was wide- 
spread ; under one phase or another it was repeated in Persia 
and India, it was the basis of the Eleusinian mysteries of 
Greece, and was told at the hearthstones of our Scandinavian 
ancestors, whose Woden and Frea — as they called Osiris and 
Isis — gave name to our Wednesday and Friday. The story 
expressed the universal desire that torn humanity might be 
reunited. This was the dream of the ancient philosophers ; 
three hundred years before Christ, Zeno spoke of the fellow- 
citizenship of man, and said that the whole world ought to be 
one flock. 

Christ came to realize this dream of the heathen. Scattered 
at Eden, scattered at Babel, scattered by every war and evil 
passion since. He came to join us again, " That they all may 
be one," or, as St. John expresses it, " That He should gather 
together in one the children of God that were scattered 
abroad." " Together," that is the Christian watchword. No 
more discord or separation ; one heart here, and one home on 
(136) 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 137 

the shores beyond. And riven as is the Body of the Lord, 
each member is instinct with this common life ; each yearns 
to find the others, and cannot rest till bone shall come to 
bone, and flesh to flesh, and the beautiful Spouse of Christ 
shall be *' fitly joined together, and compacted by that which 
every joint supplieth." 

To do this, Jesus did not trust to argument or affection or 
contingency of any kind. By His divine power as our New 
Creator, He made us one. Scripture does not speak of our one- 
ness as a thing of the future, to be hoped for, but as an actual 
and present thing, an existing fact — *' There is one body." 
With the same certainty that Paul says, '' There is one God 
and Father of all," so does he say " there is one faith and one 
baptism." '' By one Spirit," says he, " we are all baptized 
into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we 
be bond or free, and have been all made to drink of one Spirit." 

In itself, therefore, Christian oneness is a thing we need not 
worry about at all ; it was accomplished long ago, accom- 
plished so perfectly that we cannot break it up. In 1380 the 
University of Paris recommended to the Pope that Greece, 
having become a heretical country, should no longer be con- 
sidered a part of Europe. It happened, however, that Greece 
was a part of Europe by the act .of God, so it held on to the 
continent in spite of the Pope. We are joined to one an- 
other also by the act of God. The bond does not depend 
upon us in the least ; we are not educated into it or persuaded 
into it, we are born into it, and cannot get out of it. 

We have one Father. The same paternal blood flows in the 
veins of all the sons of God. All the lines, bars, sects, creeds, 
and controversies on earth cannot sever the link that binds us 
as we fall before one footstool, and cry, " Our Father, who art 
in heaven." That prayer proves us brothers. My brother 
may refuse me his hand, may pronounce his anathema upon 
me, and shut me out from fellowship ; he may drive me out 
of his pulpit and away from his communion-table, but beyond 
his anathema or his hate, the fact stands untouched — he is 
my brother. We have read of a wealthy woman at the South 
End, Boston, who hires her sister as a servant, treats her as a 
menial, and never lets her sit at the family table. They are 
sisters, though, for all that. We have been told of two bro- 
thers, one of whom, fought on the Northern side, the other on 



138 Divisions Hurt our Oneness, 

the Southern side, during our war, and who, meeting after 
fifteen years' separation, refused to speak to one another ; but 
they continue brothers, nevertheless. So, our family relation- 
ship as Christians, being established by the Almighty, and 
coming down by the lineage of God's everlasting election and 
love, is a good deal older thing and a good deal deeper thing 
than our quarrels. 

We have one Saviour. Above the whole weary list of Chris- 
tian sects, this thing remains eternally true — our sins hung 
around the same neck at Gethsemane, and pierced the same 
side at Calvary. To one Cross do we look for relief from the 
burden of sin, and to one spotless robe do we go for a cloth- 
ing- of righteousness. 

More than that. In our one Saviour's life do we all live. 
^' / am the true vine^ ye are the branches ^ Christ is not the 
trunk, and we the branches. He is the whole vine, and we 
parts of Him, members making up His fullness and outline. 
We may clash and chafe against each other, as the branches 
of a vine do in the wind, still we belong to one another. No 
branch exists by itself. Christ with His people form one spir- 
itual corporation. Through all is a common support and 
common strength. He is a Christian who partakes of Christ's 
life, and he is united to every one else who partakes of that 
life. While we remain Christians we cannot cut this connec- 
tion. ^' If the foot or the hand say, '■ I am not of the body,' is it 
therefore not of the body?" All talk of independent inter- 
ests is folly ; we have no independent interests. Rivalry be- 
tween us is absurd. *' Whether one member suffer, all the 
members suffer with it ; or one member be honored, all the 
members rejoice with it." 

We have one spiritual experience. With every diversity of 
incident. Christian life has one unvarying course. One God, 
the Holy Ghost, moves among dead sinners and makes them 
live. Regeneration is the sarne thing with us all ; and after 
the new birth we everywhere struggle with the same evil 
nature, and learn humility in the same hard school of trial. 
Daily we feel the bite of the fiery serpent, and daily we look 
to the same deliverance. At a meeting once held at the seat 
of a German university, it was found that representatives 
were present from the four quarters of the earth, and it was 
proposed that each should tell his religious experience. Ac- 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 139 

cordingly, they went over it one after another— conviction, 
conversion, joy, and the lesson of daily dependence — it was 
the very same story from European, American, African, and 
Asiatic. 

How united we are in our Prayer-meetings / Distinctions 
vanish as we tell our griefs to the All-pitying One, and cry, 
" God, be merciful to us sinners." The Fulton Street prayer- 
meeting has no trouble excluding controversy ; it excludes 
itself. Longing for help, the assembly is one. No sectarian- 
ism as the penitent pleads for mercy, and the mother begs 
intercession for her wandering boy. 

So with our Praise. We have Baptist Hymnals, and Meth- 
odist Hymnals, and Presbyterian Hymnals, but it is pretty 
much the same hymns in them all. When a stubborn heart 
relents, the words invariably come, 

"Jesus, I my cross have taken 
All to leave and follow Thee." 

When we joy in our salvation, up springs the paean, 

" All hail, the power of Jesus' name ! " 

The Calvinist delights in the sweet strain of Wesley : 

" Jesus, lover of my soul." 

And the Methodist shakes the rafters with the lines of the 
predestinarian, Augustus Toplady : 

" Rock of Ages, cleft for me." 

The Presbyterian, after denouncing prelacy, will conclude with 
Bishop Heber's 

" From Greenland's icy mountains." 

And more than once we have heard Episcopalians excoriate 
dissent, and end with the stanzas of the Puritan, Timothy 
D wight : 

" I love Thy kingdom, Lord, 
The house of Thine abode ; 
The church our blest Redeemer saved 
With His own precious blood. 

" I love Thy church, O God, 
Her walls before Thee stand, 



140 Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 

Dear as the apple of Thine eye, 
And graven on Thy hand." 

Sectarian leaders dwell on the differences between us, yet 
they themselves are ever breathing each other's breath and 
thinking each other's thoughts. Episcopalians still feel the 
inspiration of Luther and Calvin and Knox ; the sentiments 
of Owen and Howe are heard from scores of their pulpits ; 
they dream with Bunyan, call the impenitent with the voice 
of Baxter, and tell of the rise and progress of religion in the 
soul from the pages of Doddridge. And on the other hand, 
the followers of Calvin and Wesley and Roger Williams arm 
themselves from the store-houses of the Episcopacy ; they 
meet the skeptic with Bishop Butler the Socinian with Jones 
of Nayland, and the worldling with arguments from Leighton 
and Hopkins. 

We isolate ourselves and make exclusive laws, but every 
impulse of the new nature is against it. New converts, like 
those at Pentecost, are always " of one mind and of one 
heart." They have to be labored with before they become 
sectarians ; and they are afterward ever breaking out of the 
bounds — kindling their fagots at a neighbor's fire, and filling 
their pitchers with waters of Siloam from a neighbor's cistern. 
Vines send their roots under our fences, and bees gather honey 
over them ; so, spiritual affection is always going under and 
over our division walls. Partisan pride is distant and divisive, 
but God is one, and the Christian heart is one. 

We have one Final Home. Magnify our differences as we 
may, a glance at the end shows that Christians are all of one 
religion. We do not go to heaven sectarians ; we come to- 
gether at last. While Burgoyne's army was preparing to sur- 
render at Saratoga in 1777, the troops on both sides talked 
across the little stream between them ; and once a British 
soldier and another from the American lines, rushed down 
and embraced each other in the river. Fighting under dif- 
ferent flags, they were ignorant till that moment that they 
were brothers. And if we never learn it before, we find out 
in the river of death that we are all of one blood. Party 
names and party badges float away in that stream. Mrs. 
Elizabeth Jocelyn Cleaveland has put it in verse : 

" Talking of sects quite late one eve, 
What one and another of saints believe, 



(( < 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 

That night I stood in a troubled dream 
By the side of a darkly-flowing stream. 

' And a ' churchman ' down to the river came. 
When I heard a strange voice call his name, 
* Good father, stop ; when you cross this tide 
You must leave your robes on the other side.' 

But the aged father did not mind. 
And his long gown floated out behind, 
As down to the stream his way he took, 
His hands firm hold of a gilt-edged book. 

I'm bound for heaven, and when I'm there 
I shall want my book of Common Prayer ; 
And though I put on a starry crown, 
I should feel quite lost without ray gown.' 

" I saw him again on the other side, 
But his silk gown floated on the tide, 
And no one asked, in that blissful spot, 
If he belonged to ' the church ' or not. 

" Next down to the river a Quaker strayed. 
His dress of a sober hue was made : 
' My hat and coat must be of gray, 
I cannot go any other way.' 

*• Buttoning his coat straight up to his chin. 
He staidly, solemnly waded in ; 
And his broad-brimmed hat he pulled down tight 
Over his forehead, so cold and white. 

*' But a strong wind carried away his hat. 
And he sighed a few moments over that ; 
And then, as he gazed to the farther shore, 
The coat slipped off and was seen no more. 

" Then gravely walking, two saints by name, 
Down to the stream together came ; 
But as they stopped at the river's brink, 
I saw one saint from the other shrink. 

" ' Sprinkled or plunged, may I ask you, friend, 
How you attained to life's great end } ' 
' Thus, with a few drops on my brow : ' 
' But I have been dipped, as you'll see me now.' 

*' ' And I really think it will hardly do, 
As I'm " close communion," to cross with you ; 
You're bound, I know, to the realms of bliss, 
But you must go that way, and I'll go this.' 



141 



142 Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 

" And straightway plunging with all his might. 
Away to the left — his friend at the right — 
Apart they went from this world of sin. 
But how did the brethren * enter in ? ' 

" And now where the river was rolling on, 
A Presbyterian throng went down ; 
Concerning the road they could never agree, 
The old, or the new, which it could be. 

" I watched them long in my curious dream, 
Till they stood by the border of the stream ; 
Then, just as I thought, the two ways met, 
But all the brethren were talking yet, 

" And would talk on, till the heaving tide 
Carried them over, side by side ; 
Side by side, for the way was one, 
When the toilsome road of life was done. 

" No forms or crosses, or books had they ; 
No gowns of silk, or suits of gray ; 
No creeds to guide them, or MSS., 
For all had put on ' Christ's righteousness.' " 

What nothings are our little disputes as we study the Book 
of Revelation, and view the mighty events so soon to come, 
where we shall stand side by side. Says Dr. Gumming : 

" I have learned what true catholicity is since I began to study the Apoca- 
lypse. I have learned how poor and evanescent are all the distinctions of 
sect, how real and substantial is the grace of God. I have learned how 
unimportant it is before God to be a churchman or dissenter, how unspeak- 
ably precious it is to be a Christian. I have seen upon the stage of that 
mysterious drama, that all distinctions, except those of Christ and Anti- 
christ, drop away ; these alone appear upon the scene, and these alone are 
cast up before the great white throne." 

We wrangle now, and hide our oneness from human sight, 
but it will come out at the last when, with the New Song on 
our lips, we cast our crowns before the Saviour's throne, with 
no rivalry but that of praise. The motto on Bagster's edition 
of the Greek Testament is, " Many tongues on earth, but only 
one in heaven." Yes, we will worship together on the other 
side of the pearly gates. There are no sectarian temples there. 
In a vision of the night, John Wesley once found himself at 
those gates, and began to inquire who were within. " Any 
Wesleyans here ? " '' No." '' Any Presbyterians ? " " No." 



Divisiojis Hui^t our Oneness. 143 

"Any Church of England men?" "No." "Any Roman 
CathoHcs?" "No." "Who have you here then?" "We 
know nothing of any of those names ; we are all Christians 
here, and of them we have a great multitude which no man 
can number, of all nations and kindreds and peoples and 
tongues ! " 

The conception is grand — it could only have come from the 
mind of God — all who have been, are, and shall be, saved, from 
the fall of Adam to the end of time ; all the redeemed, on 
both sides the dark river, are the one indivisible Body of 

Christ : 

" Angels, and living saints and dead, 
But one communion make. 
All join in Christ their vital Head, 
And of His love partake." 

THE ONE CHURCH. 

Christian oneness being a thing created and fixed, the next 
point is to show it. It is the will of God that the inward 
reality be outwardly seen, be so apparent that the world may 
recognize its existence and feel its power ; so He planned that 
His people form everywhere a public relationship, called The 
Church, which as one body should manifest the one life. 
Were our unity merely spiritual, it would make no impression ; 
men do not care for abstractions ; they notice what is done, 
what comes out. So the Church was to be a thing which folks 
could hear, and feel, and see. 

This Church which includes the vast household of faith, all 
the elect, the entire family, has a great deal said about it in 
Scripture, and it is always spoken of as one thing — in the singu- 
lar number, never in the plural. Look at the list of its names 
in the Bible : 



Assembly of the Saints. 

Body of Christ. 

Bride of Christ. 

Church of God. 

Church of the First-Born, 

City of the Living God. 

Congregation of Saints. 

Congregation of the Lord's poor. 

Dove. 

Family in Heaven and Earth. 

Flock of God. 



Fold of Christ. 

General Assembly of the First-Born. 

Goden Candlestick. 

God's Building. 

God's Husbandry. 

God's Heritage. 

Habitation of God. 

Heavenly Jerusalem. 

Holy City. 

Holy Hill. 

Holy Mountain. 



144 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 



House of God. 

House of Christ. 

Household of Grod. 

Inheritance. 

Israel of God. 

King's Daughter. 

Lamb's Wife. 

Lot of God's inheritance. 

Mount Zion. 

Mountain of the Lord of Hosts. 

Mountain of the Lord's House. 

New Jerusalem. 

Pillar and Ground of the Truth. 



Place of God's Throne. 

Pleasant Portion. 

Sanctuary of God. 

Sister of Christ. 

Spouse of Christ. 

Spiritual House. 

Strength and Glory of God. 

Sought out, a city not forsaken. 

Tabernacle. 

The Lord's portion. 

Temple of God. 

Vineyard. 



Thus, the Church is spoken of in the Bible in forty-seven 
different ways, and always as one, single thing. 

This is likewise shown in its history. The Church as a visi- 
ble society, organized at first under the covenant with Abra- 
ham, had one tabernacle or temple, one priesthood, one Mercy- 
seat, and one Urim and Thummim for the revelation of the 
divine will. No rival religious institutions were allowed ; and 
this unity remained unbroken through all the Old Testament 
history, a period of two thousand years. 

To see how sacredly it was kept, notice that incident of the 
Altar of Wititess, which happened in the days of Joshua, the 
best generation of all. The tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the 
half tribe of Manasseh having apportioned to them the coun- 
try east of the Jordan, erected an altar on the banks of that 
stream. What for ? The other tribes took the alarm ; here, 
they suspected, was an attempt to start a rival worship, to 
split the Church into denominations. They gathered indig- 
nantly to put it down ; they met the offenders ; and then it 
came out that the column was not set up for worship, for sac- 
rifice, but as an altar of witness — a memorial pillar. The chil- 
dren of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh feared that, being on the 
other side of the Jordan, their brethren might in time come 
to hold them as another sect, and they built this monument 
as a testimony that they were undivided from the one Church 
of Israel. So jealous was this whole band of heroes against 
any approach to division ! 

In this Church Jesus Christ was born. It had grown cor- 
rupt, and He denounced its corruptions, but He did not divide 
it. He observed its ordinances, and lived and died a member 
of it. After His resurrection, as its Head, He, through His 



Divisions Hurt our Oneiiess, 145 

apostles, remodeled it, and fitted it for a broader unity ; He 
abolished the exclusive priesthood and sacrifice of the Jews, 
and arranged that we might worship anywhere if we did it " in 
spirit and in truth." The unity of ritual was done away, but 
the unity of religion still remained. The one Jewish Church 
developed into the one Christian Church ; it was not division or 
dismemberment, it was enlargement, emancipation — the but- 
terfly coming out of its shell. 

But it was only one butterfly that came out of the shell. 
The Church of Christ, like the one it superseded, was a single 
institution. We hear around us a great clamor of Churches. 
** This one's Church," and " That one's Church ; " ^' the Epis- 
copal Church," and "the Presbyterian Church." The Master 
never recognized but one — '' My Church ; " " On this rock I 
will build My Church." 

This Church of Jesus Christ was an actual and visible thing. 
It was an established corporation which originated at Jerusa- 
lem, and spread from there into all parts of the world. It was 
a body seen by men, with a membership and ministry. It had 
actual and visible work to do. It was to proclaim and defend 
the Truth, and to struggle with Satan. Just as the pilgrims at 
Plymouth formed against the savage men and beasts around 
them, so the Church of Christ formed for its common dangers 
and common work. It was a corporation, a brotherhood, a 
family. 

Nothing but distance prevented this one Church of Christ 
from meeting in one assembly ; but being scattered, it testified 
its oneness by tnutual recognition. A Christian in New Testa- 
ment times could go from congregation to congregation 
throughout Palestine, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Egypt, and 
Ethiopia, and be received by all. A member anywhere was a 
member everywhere. One certificate of Christian character 
carried a brother to the embrace of all the Christians on the 
earth. 

This unity was also manifested by fraternal acts. The 
Churches of Macedonia and Galatia made contributions for 
those of Judea. The Church at Ephesus wrote to the disci- 
ples in Achaia, exhorting them to receive Apollos. Paul was 
accompanied to Troas by members of the Church of Berea, 
and of Thessalonica, and of Derbe, and all were present when 
the Church at Troas met to " break bread." St. Paul desired the 



146 Divisions Hurt our Oiteness, 

brethren at Rome to receive in the Lord, Phoebe, a deaconess 
of Cenchrea. The Churches of Asia saluted that of Corinth, and 
the Colossians were told to salute the brethren of Laodicea, 
and to interchange epistles with them. 

On this one Church of Christ, the fraternity of all His people, 
the Martyrs fixed their eyes and their hearts. Ignatius, con- 
temporary with St. John, says : ^^ Where Christ is, there is the 
catholic Church." Polycarp, a disciple of St. John, as he was 
led to the stake, obtained one hour for prayer, and in that prayer 
we are told he '' remembered all who were connected with him, 
and the whole catholic Church throughout the world." The 
Fathers felt that in the oneness of the Church was involved her 
chastity as the Bride of Jesus, and so through all their differences, 
they clung to the words of the most ancient confession: ''I 
believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of 
saints." Mortal words were never more eloquent than those 
which Bishop Ridley, on the day of his martyrdom, addressed 
to this Church of his love : 

" Farewell, Christ's dearly-beloved spouse, here wandering in the world, 
as in a strange land, far from thine own country, and compassed about on 
every hand, with deadly enemies, which cease not to assault thee, ever 
seeking thy destruction ! Farewell, farewell, O ye the whole and universal 
congregation of the chosen God, here living upon earth — the true Church 
militant of Christ, the true mystical body of Christ, the very household and 
family of God, and the sacred temple of the Holy Ghost ! Farewell, fare- 
well, O thou flock of the high and heavenly Pastor, Christ ! for to thee it 
hath pleased the Heavenly Father to give an everlasting and eternal 
kingdoHi. Farewell, farewell, thou spiritual house of God, thou holy and 
royal priesthood, thou chosen generation, thou holy nation, thou purchased 
spouse ! Farewell ! farewell ! " 

This heavenly creation, this miracle of Christian love, this 
magnificent witness and proof of the Spirit's work among men, 
is gone now, faded out of sight and mind. Oneness exists as 
ever, but its sign, its testimony has not been seen for some 
fifteen hundred years. The Robe of Jesus, " without seam, 
woven from the top throughout," is torn into pieces, and the 
very word " catholic " is given up to a pretentious and bigoted 
sect. 

There is a strange feeling in the public mind on this subject. 
Inquire into it. *' Oh, unity was a good thing for the early 
Christians, but it will not do in this age ; sects are necessary 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 147 

now ; there Is such a difference between us ! " What an ex- 
cuse that is, when the New Testament shows that the early- 
Christians had just as great a variety of opinions as we have, 
and were just as obstinate in holding them, and yet they were 
united for centuries. No, that is not the real apology. In- 
quire further, and we shall find a fact which Christians do not 
like to speak of. So utterly have they parted from the noble 
past, that they have lost the desire for unity. In the Epistle 
to the Ephesians, St. Paul refers lovingly to the Church 
twenty-seven times, and every time it is to this one, universal 
Church ; yet we are prejudiced against it. In days gone by 
there have been attempts to express this oneness by worldly 
methods and power, to force human thought and worship 
into one groove, and there has been bad work — bitterness, 
and strife, and cruelty. So, the moment you talk of one 
Church, the people think of some dreadful hierarchy, some 
great Mogul, or Star Chamber, issuing decrees ; they recall 
the Papacy, rising, rank above rank, " a living pyramid, on 
whose summit is enthroned a ruling mind, and at whose base 
kneels an obedient world." 

There is some terrible mistake. We may find it in studying 
the question, 

WHAT IS THE CHURCH? 

We preach about the Church, and dispute about it, and 
write volumes on Church principles and Church authority, and 
yet, ask almost any man what the Church is, and you confuse 
him. It is high time we knew what we were talking about. 

The Church is not any mysterious or complicated thing, 
hard to understand. It is an easy and simple thing. The 
trouble is, it has been overlaid, " Oh, the rubbish," exclaims 
Dr. Mark Hopkins, " that passes under the name of religion, 
with no righteousness in it — the rubbish of creeds, the rubbish 
of organization, the rubbish of ritualism ! " A sculptor was 
once seen gazing at a rough block of marble that had just 
been brought into his workroom. " Why do you look so at the 
stone ? " asked a friend. " Oh," replied the artist, '^ I see in that 
block an angel more beautiful than man ever beheld." '' You 
mean that you are going to make the block into an angel." 
" No, no," said the artist, " the angel is in there now, I see him, 
and I am just going to clip away the bits of stone that im- 



148 Divisions Hurt our One^iess. 

prison him, and let him out that the world may see him ! " 
That is what we must do before we can see the Church in her 
original beauty ; we must get the angel out of the rubbish ; 
we must clear away the trumpery in w^hich men have hidden 
the Body of the Lord. 

We shall have no difficulty in this if we follow the Scrip- 
tural model. The idea has long prevailed that Christ gave a 
few general principles, and left us to arrange the Church for 
ourselves. Some things take months for us to learn, some things 
ages. It has taken fifteen hundred years of blundering for us 
to understand that in dealing with the Church of God, we 
must keep close to the word of God — that we must take the 
Church just as Christ left it. The Lord lets us build houses 
and bridges, but His Church is beyond our capacity ; He takes 
that in His own hands. His word to Peter was : " I will build 
my Church." 

The first time we read of the Christian Church in the Bible, 
is at the day of Pentecost, when at the preaching of Peter, 
three thousand believed in Christ and joined the first disciples. 
The community thus formed was called '^ The Church." " And 
the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved." 
All of it was that the members had faith in Jesus, made an 
open confession of that faith, and were drawn to work and 
worship together. This was the Church complete. 

The name of it implies this and nothing more. The original 
New Testament word, " Ekklesia," means an assembly. As 
used by the Greeks, the word signified a meeting of citi- 
zens summoned by the crier. The concourse of people con- 
vened by Demetrius in the theatre at Ephesus on account of 
his silver shrines, is termed in the Greek Testament an ^' ek- 
klesia." So, the called out people of God, those who have 
been moved by the Spirit to come forth from the world and 
collect in His name, are the Christian Ekklesia or Church. It 
is the Company of the Faithful. 



THE ONE ORGANIZATION. 

Studying this Pentecostal Church, we are struck with the 
absence of machinery. It was simply a collection of persons 
made one in Christ. There were no arrangements for the 
election of officials or the exercise of authority ; no conven- 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 149 

tion to frame a constitution ; no place designated as the seat 
of government. 

These things were not merely postponed ; a human external 
ecclesiasticism was forbidden. '' My kingdom," said Jesus, 
'''■ is not of this world." " Call no man master — one is your 
Master." When His disciples disputed as to which should 
have the highest office. He said : " The princes of the Gentiles 
exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise 
authority upon them, but it shall not be so among you." 
There w^as to be no lording it over God's heritage. Christ is 
the only ruler of His people. Isolate ; by Himself; a priest 
after the order of Melchisedek, without successors or deputies. 
He superseded the Jewish priesthood, and put no other in its 
place. Independent of all codes and officials, He stands 
among His people, their one center and organization — their 
Prophet, Priest, and King. Buildings were afterward put up, 
and elders and deacons chosen, but these were mere con- 
veniences and helps ; they are not at all essential to the 
Church ; an axe is a convenient thing, but it is not part of a 
man's arm ; domestics are useful about the house, but the 
family was before them, and may continue without them. 
The Church is complete outside of all her tools and servants. 

Let us examine the real structure and fabric of the Church. 
A dead soul, through the work of the Holy Ghost becomes 
born to a new life. Christ takes possession of this new soul's 
affections ; it henceforth thinks and feels according to His 
will. That soul is united to Christ ; it is a part of Him ; He 
sets it in position, and gives it appropriate work to do. As 
the apostle says : " Now hath He set the members in the 
body, every one of them as it hath pleased Him." Then, an- 
other soul is converted ; it is also united to Christ, and its 
place and work appointed ; and so on. Thus, Christ's body 
is composed of multitudes of regenerate souls, all acting by 
one will. Every finger, every toe, every hair is moved by the 
life from the Head ; and as there is but one Head, there is but 
one life, or, as Scripture puts it : 



" As we have many members in one body, and all members have not the 
same office ; so, we being many, are one body in Christ, and every one 
members one of another, having gifts differing according to the grace tliat 
is given to us." — Rom. xii. 4, 5, 6. 



150 Divisions Hurt ozir Oneness. 

Each one's being united to Christ therefore results in all be- 
ing united to each other; a member being joined to the head, 
is joined to every other through the head. Thus there is 
formed a living organization, a vital union. 

It is like a magnet among little pieces of iron. Before the 
magnet comes, the filings have nothing to do with one an- 
other ; they stay around just as you put them ; but after 
the magnet has touched them, they cluster together; they 
all hang to it and to each other. The bond is not mechan- 
ical ; it is not the organization of a knife or a watch ; there 
are no rivets, or clamps, or cases; it is a chemical union, it 
comes from the fascination, the cohering power of the lode- 
stone. So Christians, magnetized by Christ, become magnetic 
to each other. *^ And I," said Jesus, *'if I be lifted up, will 
draw all men unto me." Drawn to Jesus, we draw to each 
other. Divine love no sooner enters a soul than that soul be- 
comes one with all the saints in heaven and earth. We in- 
stantly become gregarious. Naturalists tell us of little lode- 
stone pebbles, which, scattered on the ground, will immedi- 
ately come and nestle together. Take one of them off three 
or four feet, let it drop, and away it runs to its fellows. In 
the regions where they abound, they always lie cuddled like 
birds in a nest. That is God's organization of His Church. 
The first thing a magnetized Christian does is to look around 
for another, and then he says : '' Entreat me not to leave 
thee, or to return from following after thee ; for whither thou 
goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge ; thy peo- 
ple shall be my people, and thy God my God." You never 
saw a disciple of Jesus on the streets of Jerusalem or on the 
shores of Gennesaret without seeing another close by. Wher- 
ever Peter went, James and John were sure to go. 

The Pentecostal Church, the Holy Spirit's Church, had no 
formal, worldly organization therefore, because it did not need 
it. It was organized at the start — completely, solidly organ- 
ized in Christ. Having a convergent tendency within them. 
Christians do not require an outward force to keep them to- 
gether. We read not long ago of the lightning striking a coun- 
try store and scattering a barrel of nails. The frightened 
merchant, when he came to pick up his nails, found they had 
acquired a new property, they had become magnetic ; they did 
not need a barrel now, for they clung together of themselves. 



Divisions Hurt our One^iess. 151 

So Christians, who have been touched from heaven, have no 
occasion for the cribs and fences necessary to human institu- 
tions. They no more need a written compact than do a flock 
of sheep. 

THE ONE GROUP. 

This voluntary oneness of the Church is the principle and 
secret of her organization. All free, but none alone ; without 
a band or hoop, but with mutual attraction, the early Chris- 
tians met together everywhere and in every way they could. 
The first Church, the Church of Jerusalem, we are told, was 
made up of Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and dwellers 
in Mesopotamia, and in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and 
Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Lybians, Romans, Jews and 
proselytes, Cretes and Arabians — a motley crowd ! But these 
people, being drawn to Christ, were drawn so tight to each 
other, that they would not go apart. They had no idea of 
going back home again. Seven chapters of the Acts are taken 
up with their doings in Jerusalem, where they would have 
stayed with each other till they died, had not God sent a 
persecution to force them asunder. 

Being thus '■'■ scattered abroad," what then ? Why, the 
Christian affinity worked in each place just as it had done in 
Jerusalem. Those came together who were near enough ; all 
grouped who could. Hold a cup of quicksilver in your hand ; 
it is one mass — that is the Church in Jerusalem. Pour the 
quicksilver out on the floor ; it forms everywhere in globules, 
each little ball perfectly symmetrical and round — that is the 
Church scattered abroad. Gather the quicksilver into the cup 
again ; it coalesces, one body as before- -that is the Church in 
Heaven. So the dispersed Christians, grouped in each local- 
ity on the earth, till they could group all together again in 
heaven. Each little sphere considered itself as but tempo- 
rarily detached from the great sphere ; separated by rivers 
and mountains, but still one with all other Christians. See 
how St. Paul addresses the Corinthians : 

" Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sancti- 
fied in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon 
the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." 

This spontaneous organization of the Church puzzles those 
who look on it as a human institution. It is now here and 



152 Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 

now there ; now we see it a little company at the cross-roads, 
and now we behold it stretching out over heaven and earth. 
It is a spiritual body, a living house. Let us view it in its 
different phases. 

First, we find that every assembly of believers around their 
Lord is a church. It was while giving the charter and dis- 
cipline of the Church that Jesus said : 

" Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in 
the midst of them." 

This fact should have stopped forever our foolish attempts 
to fix the Church, and bind it down in human rules and sys- 
tems. 

Next, we find that every Christian family is a Christian 
Church. Three times is the Church of the Household men- 
tioned in the New Testament : 

The Church in the house of Aquila and Priscilla — i Cor. xvi. 19. 
" " " Nymphas — Col. iv. 15. 

" " " Philemon — Philemon 2. 

But by that same spiritual arithmetic which says that in the 
Godhead there are three in one, this church of the assembly 
and church of the family are one in the Church of the TowUy 
which includes them all. For — 

Over and over again is the fact repeated in the New Testa- 
ment that all the Christians in any place form the Chtirch of 
that place. Never by any possibility can there be more than 
one church in a place. Congregations of believers may meet 
for worship in different parts of a city, but howxver great 
their m.ultitude or numerous their sanctuaries, they all make 
up but one church. If there are but two or three believers, 
they are the church of that town ; if there are 50,000 believ- 
ers, it is just the same : no matter how many varieties of 
worship and opinion, there is but one church in that town. 
The church of a neighborhood comprises all the believing 
neighbors ; the only divisions between churches are made by 
the spread of the earth — geographical, not partisan. 

This was the Gospel arrangement ; accordingly, we find the 
Christians of a city always spoken of thus : 

The Church at Jerusalem — Acts viii. i. 
Babylon — i Peter v. 13. 
" Antioch — Acts xiii. i. 



Divisions Htu^t our Oneness. 153 

The Church of Laodicea— Col. iv. 16. 

" which is at Cenchrea — Rom. xvi. i. 

" of Ephesus — Rev. ii. i. 

" in Smyrna — Rev. ii. 8. 

" in Pergamos — Rev. ii. 12. 

« in Thyatira — Rev. ii. 18. 

" in Sardis — Rev. iii. i. 

" in Philadelphia — Rev. iii. 7. 

" of the Thessalonians — i Thess. i. i. 

" of God which is at Corinth — i Cor. i. 2.. 

Not one instance is there in the New Testament where the 
believers of a place are called the cJnircJies of that place. 
Neander says that to speak of the churches of a place would 
have been held by the early Christians as an advertisement of 
schism. 

When we look at these churches particularly, the fact be- 
comes more striking. 

The Church at Jerusalem had several thousand members. 
These '' thousands who believed " could not meet regularly 
in the same room. They were too many for one pastor's 
voice or one pastor's care. They undoubtedly met in differ- 
ent congregations around the city as was convenient. But 
they formed but one church. It was always the '' Church of 
Jerusalem," not the churches. ' 

In the vast city of Ephesus also were many congregations. 
Upon his journey to Jerusalem, St. Paul, stopping at Miletus, 
sent for the elders of the Church at Ephesus to come and see 
him. In his address to these pastors, the apostle speaks of 
the Christians of that city as one flock and one Church. He 
tells them that after his departure, perverse men, wolves, would 
enter in to draw off disciples, and make rival sects. He warns 
them not to let their unity be broken up. Thirty-six years 
pass away, and the number of Christians in Ephesus is largely 
increased ; the Church there, planted by St. Paul, and long 
under the pastorate of St. John, numbers without doubt 
scores of congregations ; yet, when from Patmos John sends 
to them his last message, he sees them but as one body, and 
his words are, " Unto the angel of the Church of Ephesus, 
write." 

In the city of Corinth the sectarians went so far as to have 
different parties with different names. There were Paulites, 
and Peterites, and Apollosites, and Christites (the last no less 



154 Divisions Hurt our Oneness, 

sectarian than the others). What does Paul do ? He does 
not blame them for their variety of opinions, but he declared 
it worldly and carnal to have envying and strife and division. 
Under no pretext were they to divide the one body of Christ 
in Corinth. Whatever their persuasions — and each man was 
to be fully persuaded in his own mind — there was to be but 
one Church in that city ; and, accordingly, his Epistle was 
directed to them in these significant words : " Paul, called to 
be an apostle of Jesus Christ unto the Church of God which 
is at Corinth." 

Taking a step farther, we see that Scripture oneness is per- 
fectly safe against ever growing into a consolidated, central- 
ized despotism. While the Christians of a town formed to- 
gether the Church of that town, we find that a church never 
included more than one town. No Gospel Church ever crossed 
two corporation limits. Whenever a region was spoken of — 
a section of country embracing several towns — then it was the 
churches. Thus it uniformly reads : 

The Churches of Judea — Gal. i. 22. 

Samaria — Acts ix. 31. 
Galilee — Acts ix. 31. 
Galatia — i Cor. xvi. i. 
Syria— Acts xv. 41. 
Cilicia — Acts xv. 41 . 
Macedonia — 2 Cor. viii. i. 

We read frequently of the churches of Asia, but never of 
any Church of Asia. In other words, churches never com- 
bined to form larger organizations. Thus, such structures as 
the Church of Scotland, the Church of England, etc., are 
utterly unscriptural. When our Episcopal bishops recently 
styled themselves " Bishops of the American Church," they 
indicated some society that the Bible knows nothing about. 

In the New Testament we find that each local church was 
responsible only to Christ ; each had its own way of doing 
things, and was free from all others. The arrangements of 
the Church of Jerusalem were not like those of the Church 
of Corinth, or of the Church of Antioch. Some churches 
were made up of Jewish converts, some of Gentile converts, 
and some of both. The same regulations could not suit them 
all. Mosheim says : 

" The primitive churches were entirely independent, none of them being 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness, 155 

subject to any foreign jurisdiction A perfect equality reigned among 

them ; nor does there appear in the first century the smallest trace of that 
association of provincial churches from which councils and metropolitans 
derive their origin." 

The different churches consulted with each other, aided 
each other, and sometimes co-operated with each other, but 
they never attempted to control each other. As among Chris- 
tians, so among churches, it was a voluntary oneness. The 
only bond of union was Christian fellowship in Christ. 

Thus, on the Bible plan, a hierarchy is impossible. The 
universal oneness cannot interfere with Christian liberty. 
After the apostles had been dead about a hundred years, the 
churches, under ambitious leaders, began to consolidate and 
form large ecclesiastical confederations. It was contrary to 
Scripture, and from that time unity of spirit began to give 
way to unity of human government, and Christianity to sink 
toward popery. 

THE ONENESS HURT. 

" The kingdom of God cometh not with observation," but 
the more we do comprehend it the more complete and beau- 
tiful does it appear,, and the more plainly are our divisions 
seen to be marplots and disturbances. 

Glance a moment over the whole Scriptural plan. First, 
we are one. This is the foundation fact. This oneness is to 
be shown by a Church without a rent. How ? By Christians 
uniting wherever union is possible ; by the oneness of the 
Christian assembly, the Christian household, and the Chris- 
tian neighborhood. There are to be no lines through Chris- 
tians ; the only lines are to be around them — around the 
meeting, around the family, around the town. THE Church 
is the aggregate of all believers everywhere ; A church is the 
aggregate of all believers in a place; the CHURCHES are 
the same one Church in different localities. This is the plan 
on which God organized His Church ; a plan which, notwith- 
standing all our diversities of opinion and worship, would 
have kept us in every place on the earth, and manifested us 
to the world the one unsevered and unbruised Body of Christ. 

Now consider what we have done. Taking some of the 
Christians here and some of the Christians there, we have 
formed them into great corporations — Presbyterians, Metho- 



156 Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 

dists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and so on. These corporations 
draw lines around classes and sorts of believers, and through 
neighborhoods ; they join us to Christians far off whom we 
never see, and separate us from Christians whom we meet 
every day. This throws the whole divine plan of the Church 
into disorder ; it collects Christians around other centers than 
Christ ; it makes a unity of sect instead of a unity of Spirit. 
It divides the Christian GROUP of the town into opposing 
bodies, and brings confusion into every village and into almost 
every Christian family. Not a believer but is more or less 
hurt by it. However true our creed or Scriptural our ordi- 
nances, the sectarian system wounds our spiritual oneness and 
deranges the Church as God made it. 

What are these sects ? They are petrified quarrels ; they 
are disputes wrongfully started centuries ago, and wrongfully 
kept up to this day. Sects (not their members) are constitu- 
tionally inveterate and implacable. With evil natures still 
hanging to us, the best of Christians will sometimes fall out 
by the way. How often did the disciples jangle ; how often 
even after they became apostles ! Think of that sad scene 
between Paul and Barnabas, two of the holiest Christians that 
ever lived. After long journeying and toiling together, they 
disagreed as to a wretched little matter — whether John Mark 
should go with them or not. Mark had flinched on one occa- 
sion, and Paul did not want him ; but Mark was Barnabas' 
nephew, and Barnabas did want him : " And the contention 
was so sharp between them," says the Scripture, " that they 
departed asunder one from the other." But they did not 
keep it up ; oh, no ! When the one Spirit within them had 
time to work, they were both sorry, and turned in heart to 
each other again. To the hour of his death, Paul was ever 
going out of his way to say some kind word for this John 
Mark. To the Colo'ssians he wrote : " Marcus, sister's son to 
Barnabas, touching whom ye received commandment, if he 
come unto you, receive him." To Philemon he kindly speaks 
of " Marcus, my fellow-laborer." And the last lines he ever 
wrote show his yearning for his old friend : '' Take Mark," he 
says to Timothy, '^ and bring him with thee, for he is profit- 
able to me for the ministry." 

So would it always be if the Church were as God arranged 
it. No matter how fierce our contentions, the Spirit would 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 157 

bring our hearts together again, if we raised no fixed barriers 
against His mediation. The oneness being inherent, the quar- 
rels would be temporary. But sects are our ruptures organ- 
ized and made perpetual. They are hard words turned into 
stone and built into solid institutions and great walls, which 
run between us and keep us apart, so that we cannot get 
through themx and make up when we want to. 

SECTS DO NOT REPRESENT THE CHURCH. . 

Many suppose that however faulty they may be, the sects 
represent whatever of the Church there is upon the earth ; 
that if it were not for them the Church would not be seen at 
all. A great mistake. They do not represent or stand for 
the Church in any way. The Church is represented by every 
repentant sinner who clings to the cross, by every faithful 
minister who preaches the Word, by every loving look and 
cup of cold water given by one saint to another. When the 
Roman Christians began contending, as we do, about ordi- 
nances ; doing thus, or so ; eating this or that, St. Paul told 
them : " The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but 
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." 

The sects are neither preparations for the Church, or scaf- 
foldings to the Church, or logical results of the Church ; they 
are simply its marks of shame. When husband and wife live 
in different houses it signifies dispute. Our different religious 
organizations expose the Church's quarrels ; that is all the 
representing they do. In the year 1873, the Reformed (Dutch) 
Church held a convention at New Brunswick, and the Rev. 
Drs. William Adams and William Paxton went to it as dele- 
gates from the Presbyterians. Dr. Paxton gave them a plain 
talk. He said : 

" How do we maintain the communion of the saints ? We have none 
except in this interchange of delegates. We save the appearance of unity 
hereby, but scarcely. We touch each other's hands once a year. But 
does this constitute us the unbroken body of Christ ? 

" Let us ask our consciences whether there is any good reason for divis- 
ion. Ask any one what the difference is, and they oannot tell. Dr. Mc- 
Leod in India once asked a lone brother why he labored all alone, who 
answered : * There are a good many reasons ; but one tremendous reason 
is, the others sing hymns ! ' 

" Are there any such tremendous things between us.-^ You call a certain 
body a consistory ; we call the same a session. This is a tremendous 



158 Divisions Hurt ottr Oneness. 

thing. We choose elders for life ; you for life, with the private understand-^ 
ing that they will retire in two years. We are adopting this plan. Now, 
if we cannot put our fingers on the differences, why are we apart, giving 
appearances of disunion ? 

" The marriage union was referred to. Did we come to pop the ques- 
tion ? I don't look at it in that way. We do not propose marriage. We 
are already married by closer bonds. By one spirit we are all baptized into 
one body. We are married to His memory, and therefore to each other. 
We are bound by faith and affection to Christ, and therefore by the cords 
of grace to each other, which is the best and holiest marriage ever known 
in this world. We are married. But the question is this : Being married, 
shall we live in different houses ? Is it not to the dishonor of both husband 
and wife ? Being one, shall we come together and live as Christian people .'* 
What is our separation in the eye of the world ; and what is it in the Mas- 
ter's e3''e ? These resolutions speak of organic union. We are organically 
united now. The Church of Christ is an organism, having one body, one 
spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. It is not a voluntary society. The 
tie of a society is artificial, but the body and members have natural ties. 
Now the Church of Christ constitutes the members of the body, of which 
Christ is the head, and the bond is not artificial, but the natural bond of a 
living principle. The Church is no more a society than the members of 
our body are such. God's Spirit in you and in me makes an organic union. 
We have it therefore. Shall we express it to the world, or shall we con- 
tinue to deny it?" 

This was true : no one denied it ; and it meant that they 
were all living in disrepute, and dishonoring the one Body of 
Christ. What did the Convention do ? It voted thanks to 
the delegates for their addresses, and then turned round to its 
sectarian business comfortable as could be. With what forti- 
tude do we bear the disgrace of the Church ! 

See the impression we make upon the world. Here is a 
scrap from a New York daily, given quite innocently as a 
mere item of news : 

" A new Congregational church has just been organized at Bound Brook, 
with the Rev. Mr. B , a clergyman recently converted from the Presby- 
terian faith, as pastor." 

A man changes the Presbyterian for the Congregational 
form, a thing about as important as taking off his coat and 
putting on a dressing-gown, but in the eyes of the world it is 
— " converted from one faith to another ! " It looks upon us 
as distinct from each other as we are from the Mohammedans 
or the Mormons. That is the way the sects represent the one 
Body of Christ. 



Divisions Httrt our One7tess. 159 



SECTS DO NOT STRENGTHEN THE CHURCH. 

" But,'' men say, " in a matter-of-fact world like this, where 
edifices must be built of brick and mortar, and salaries paid in 
hard cash, it would never do to rely on such a fliinsy thing as a 
spiritual organization ; we must have something strong, some- 
thing substantial!' 

From the immense amount of human machinery built and 
operated by the sects, men get the idea that such machinery 
betokens power, and that an institution without it would be a 
flimsy concern. But did Christ really mean His Church to be 
a flimsy concern ? When He said that He himself was its chief 
corner, and its walls were of '* living stones," was it a fancy,, a 
castle in the air ? " The love of Christ constraineth us " — 
that works within the breast and out of human sight ; but is 
there nothing practical, no power in it ? 

Perhaps we consider the thing too coarsely ; perhaps with 
our hands full of brick and our eyes full of mortar, we do not 
perceive that the strongest organizations are inward ones. It 
is something strong that rolls the seasons round, but not a 
chain or pulley is seen ; it is something strong that keeps the 
stars on their track, but there are no iron rails under them. It 
is the organizations drawn, not forced together, that have 
conquered the world. One of the great Napoleon's army, 
being wounded in the breast, was carried to the rear. The 
surgeon, probing for the bullet, came so near the heart that the 
poor fellow cried out, " A little deeper and you will touch the 
Emperor ! " Napoleon was in their hearts ; that is why his 
legions strode over Europe. 

It was while she was organized in this way that the 
Church had her wonderful success. The Pentecostal Chris- 
tians had no creeds or human governments ; they were only 
a spiritual brotherhood united in Christ. The record of their 
organization is contained in the words — " The multitude of 
them that believed were of one heart and one soul," and 
" They were all of one accord in one place," yet that was the 
time when thousands were converted in a day ; that was the 
organization which stood against a persecuting world, and at 
last triumphed over the idolatry of Greece and pride of Rome. 
Human organization did gradually come in. Laws, officials, , 
and enginery were constantly put upon the Church to help her ; 



i6o Divisions Httrt otir Oneness, 

but they were only dead weight ; she labored under them as 
David labored under the helmet of brass and the coat of mail 
that Saul put upon him ; and at last, when the Emperor Con- 
stantine fitted her out with a complete worldly establishment, 
she sunk right down and has never been herself since. 

How men do shrink from a Theocracy ; how they ache for 
visible, outward government ! The Israelites under Jehovah 
went through the sea, conquered the promised land, and pros- 
pered better than they ever did before or since ; but they 
wanted a king wh*om they could see ; so they exchanged God 
for Saul. Christians have done the same thing ; they started 
with Jesus Christ as their only authority ; but before long they 
clamored for earthly masters and institutions like the nations 
round about them ; they added books of Leviticus to the New 
Testament, and ordained rulers and priests over those who 
were themselves '' kings and priests unto God ; " until it grew 
into the tyranny of Rome and the triple crown. That was 
rather too much, and some of us broke away. But did we go 
back to "Jesus only?" Oh, no. We merely broke up the 
great hierarchy into little hierarchies, with little governments 
and little popes. That is where we are now. 

It is wonderful. We who might accomplish mighty things 
under the lead of the Holy Ghost, tie ourselves up in human 
ecclesiasticisms. A man once said of the fraternity of Evan- 
gelical ministers in Syracuse : ** They are nearly all of the same 
age, and there is not five minutes' distance between their 
hearts ! " There is latent spiritual power in such a band as that, 
with their people behind them, to make New York smoke from 
the Hudson to the Lakes. What is the matter? They are 
tangled in sectarian cogs and wheels and straps. Oh, that the 
Christians of some town like that would try the Holy Ghost's 
Church for a month. They would find before thirty days that 
they had gathered more converts, received more money, and 
gained more influence over the people, than the sects have 
ever done in five years. 

Christian Brethren. Let us give it up. We cannot improve 
on our pattern ; we are not wiser than the Book ; we cannot 
organize the Church better than Jesus did. Which of us by 
taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature ? Neither 
can we add to the Body of Christ. The early Church was 
complete ; it was happy ; it was successful ; let us go back to 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness. i6i 

It. Let us say — no machinery in the Church but what Christ 
put there ; no laws in it but Christ's own words — then, in each 
town and hamlet throughout the land, the oneness of the 
Church will appear, and Zion will rise and shake the idolatry 
and unbelief around us as it did of yore. 
Says the Rev. R. D. Maccarthy : 

"Christian people are cursed with governments. Is there any trouble 
governing the Fulton Street Prayer-meeting? Was there any trouble 
governing the Evangelical Alliance ? Out with the idea that God's Church 
is something for somebody to govern. Let God govern His own kingdom." 

THE WRONG CONCEALED. 

The question arises, Why are our good Christian people so 
patient and quiet under these wounds of the Church ; why are 
they not in ceaseless ferment of anxiety and prayer till our 
oneness be restored ? The answer is. We tolerate the wrong 
because it is hidden under good names. Great is the havoc 
from what Dr. South calls — '' the fatal imposture and force of 
words." Going into a furnishing store, we saw rows of paper 
boxes on the shelves. All we knew of the contents was from 
the words pasted on the outside. Such is human knowledge in 
general. The truths of science and theology are boxed up, 
and we see their labels. Oh, if those labels were as correct as 
the shop-keepers' ! But alas, wrong names drove our first 
mother out of Eden, and wrong names have bothered her 
children ever since. The worst conspiracy of despots against 
truth and liberty that ever was formed, was called '^ the Holy 
Alliance ! " The bloodiest ring of Bowery roughs flourished 
under the title of " the Pet Lambs." Congregations that deny 
the Lord and His atonement, put over their doors, '' Church 
of the Redeemer, Church of the Messiah." The most exclu- 
sive of all hierarchies assumes the name of " The Catholic 
Church." Is it a wonder people are mystified ? Call things 
by their right names, and not a sect would be left standing in 
six months. Macchiavelli said that language was a contri- 
vance invented to conceal our thoughts ; partisans use Bible 
language to cover up Bible facts. 

In the first place, our divisions throw everything into con- 
fusion by calling themselves Churches. The word " Church " 
in the New Testament has a precise meaning ; it means an 
undivided group of Christian neighbors ; we divide the group, 
II 



1 62 Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 

and then put the Scriptural name on to the unscriptural fac- 
tions. What is that ? In business it is called " sharp 
practice." 

Taking up a Pacific Railroad Tourist's Guide, we saw the 
statement repeatedly : In this little place, four churches ; in 
that little place, five churches ; in the other little place, six 
churches; and so on to the end. There is not a farmer or a 
miner on that road but could see from the Bible if he would 
use his eyes, that there cannot really be more than one Church 
in any of those towns. The idea of Christ having half a dozen 
Bodies in the same village, jealous of each other's prosperity, 
hindering each other's growth, bidding against each other for 
every convert, and a member of one not being a member of 
another. Preposterous ! These clubs are unchristian. St. 
Paul denounced them. Why then are most true Christians 
found in them ? Because they have usurped the name of 
Churches. 

Sometimes this glaring misnomer is modified into ^^ Branches 
of the Church." The Presbyterian branch, the Methodist 
branch, etc. This is more modest, but just as wrong in prin- 
ciple as the other. " I am the true vine," said Jesus, " and 
ye," who? ye disciples, '' are the branches; he that abideth in 
me, and I in him, bringeth forth much fruit." Each believer 
is grafted into Christ as a branch. What right have we to 
take a word which Jesus gave to the individual Christian and 
apply it to parties which divide us ? ' We might as well call 
an axe the branch of a tree. 

So with the expression, " Joining the Church^ In common 
parlance this means adopting some creed and entering some 
sect. This belies the words and demoralizes our conceptions 
of the subject. Joining a sect is not joining the Church, and 
has nothing to do with it. When one gives his heart to Christ 
and makes a public confession of the fact, then by a Divine 
act he becomes a member of Christ's Universal Church, and 
of the special Church of the place where he lives. We do not 
admit him into the Church. We have nothing to do about it 
but to recognize the fact that he is admitted. If Alexander 
Selkirk had taught his cannibal islanders the Gospel, and they 
had believed and acknowledged it, they would have become a 
true Church, without ever having heard of a creed or sect. A 
soldier, dying in the hospital, was asked : " What Church are 



Divisions Hurt our Oneness. 163 

you of? " '' Of the Church of Christ," he repUed. '' But of 
what sect, what persuasion are you ? " " Persuasion," said the 
dying man, as his eyes turned heavenward to his Saviour, '' I 
am persuaded that neither death, nor Hfe, nor angels, nor prin- 
cipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to 
separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, my 
Lord ! " All the Bishops and Archbishops on earth could not 
make that man more a member of the Church than he already 
was. 

Says the Rev. William C. Dawson : 

" In my early youth, circumstances brought to our little village a Syrian 
or Arab Christian, a man of some distinction. When the Lord's Supper 
was handed to him, he ate and drank with much devotion. I asked after- 
ward what church he belonged to. I was told he was a Christian ; just 
that and nothing more ; that in his country a man was either a Jew, a Mo- 
hammedan, or a Christian ; they knew no other differences than these ; if 
a man was a Christian, he was a Christian, and there was the end of it ; 
nobody asked and nobody cared to know what kind of a Christian he was." 

The Arab was a member of the Church by being simply a 
Christian. Are we not all ? 

At a Sunday-school Convention in Illinois, a Presbyterian 
clergyman remarked that he had always counted himself able 
to tell whether a man was of his denomination or not, but he 
had been there for three days with men whose church relations 
he could not discover. Then turning to the president, he ex- 
claimed : " Major Whittle, what are you, anyhow ? " The 
Major came forward, and reaching out his hand, said : *' I am 
a sinner saved by grace and kept by the power of the Holy 
Spirit." The minister, bursting into tears, grasped his hand, 
saying : '^ My Brother ! " Yes, a sinner saved by grace, was 
by that simple fact his brother, was a member of the great 
Brotherhood of Christ. The sect or the creed had nothing 
whatever to do with it. 

The first thing God's people ought to do is to get back to a 
pure speech. We shall never reach Bible unity until we use 
correctly the Bible words. The word "Church" should be 
sacred among us. It should never be spoken except in its 
Scriptural meaning — the Body of Christ ; the temple of con- 
verted souls, built and inhabited by the Holy Spirit. We 
read, awhile ago, in a New York paper : "■ The Church of the 



164 Divisions Hurt our Oneness, 

Holy Saviour has been sold for debt by the sheriff! " Very 
startling news, indeed. We were much relieved to find that it 
was only a building on Twenty-fifth Street that had come 
under the hammer. Why do we apply the word *' Church " 
to buildings? It is a desecration of the term without a 
shadow of Scriptural warrant. Very truly says Elder J. V. B. 
Flack : 

" While I value and esteem the buildings erected to God, I cannot con- 
scientiously call them churches. The house may contain the Church, but 
it is not the Church by any means. The Church is composed of converted 
men and v/omen, persons born into the family of God through the Holy 
Spirit. The chapel or meeting-house is merely the edifice v^here these 
children of the Lord meet to worship. This Holy Church is ONE, whether 
the members of it meet in temple, hall, or valley, and should always be 
spoken of as the spiritual Body of Christ, distinct and separate from any 
hay, wood, or stubble." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR FELLOWSHIP. 

Let party names no more 

The Christian world o'erspread ; 
Gentile and Jew, and bond and free, 

Are one in Christ their head. 

OUR SCHISMS. 

Schism is mangling a thing that ought to be whole. It is 
not cutting the rot out of an apple, or the dead limbs from a 
tree — that is purification, cleaning away what no longer be- 
longs there — but it is dividing a sound apple, or splitting 
down a living tree. Christians are told to remove rotten oi 
dead members from the Church ; " I have written unto you," 
says St. Paul, "not to keep company, if any man that is 
called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, 
or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner ; with such an 
one, no, not to eat ; put away from yourselves that wicked 
person." But if we refuse fellowship with living Christians, 
disown them, or in any way stand apart from them, we com- 
mit schism. Roman Catholics, High-Church Episcopalians, 
close-communion Baptists, and all those sects which treat the 
rest of Christendom as outsiders, are glaring schismatics. 

But we must not confine our view to such instances. The 
evil extends beyond them a great way. 

Christians all belong to one another, as the parts of a single 
human being. The apostle, speaking of the middle wall of 
partition between Jew and Gentile being broken down, says, 
*' Christ hath made in himself of twain, one new man'' And 
Dr. Francis Wayland remarks : 

" The Church universal is one body ; the interest of one is the interest 
of all. Every member is a loser, when any other member suffers ; and 
rejoices when any other member becomes more spiritual, more prayerful, 
more like Christ, the Master. If the level of the water is raised at any 
single point in the Atlantic, the elevation affects the surface of the entire 
body. And in the gi'eat economy of God, if a single disciple, anywhere in 

(165) 



1 66 Divisions Hurt our Fellowship, 

the world, begins to live nearer to God, not only does a blessing come to 
those who see him and who are consciously affected by him, but when he 
prays, ' Thy kingdom come,' the disciples in remote lands, who will not 
know of his existence till they meet him on the brighter shores, receive 
blessings from God in answer to his supplications. And if a disciple fall 
away from the fervor of love and the purity of life, then there is at least 
the loss negatively of all the blessings that might have been conferred ; 
there is also, perhaps, an injury more positive." 

In an organization of this kind, not only repulsion or com- 
bat, but mere separation is schism. If you pull the coupler 
from a railway train, you make a schism, though the cars may 
not collide ; in a galvanic battery, if you cut the wire by a 
hair's breadth the circle is broken. So with the Church ; its 
members are forbidden not merely to bite and devour one 
another, but to disconnect at all. When a party of Christians, 
therefore, secede, and set up for themselves, and say to other 
Christians, " We have no need of thee," they become schis- 
matics. St. Paul reproved the Corinthians even before they 
formed into sects ; he censured them for so much as tending 
apart. Our denominations, from the very fact that they are 
denominations — divisions of the Christian body — are schis- 
matic and sinful. 

The mass of Christian people to-day seem to differ with 
the Almighty on this point. One old liturgy, indeed, has a 
petition, " From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism, good 
Lord, deliver us,^' but the general sentiment appears to be 
that in itself division is not wicked. A believer will often 
live in a neighborhood for years without joining the Chris- 
tians around him, because there is no sect on his exact model ; 
and distant ministers of that sect will encourage him to stand 
it out. And the zest with which church dissensions are en- 
tered into is astonishing. Says President Finney : 

** There are men, and women, too, who would be horror-stricken if a ball 
were to be gotten up in their neighborhood, who would not hesitate to orig- 
inate and perpetuate church bickerings and quarrels. They would consider 
it a moral sin to dance ; and yet arc the stirrers-up of strife, jealousies, ani- 
mosities, and hard feelings, as far as their influence extends." 

Unrestrained by any scruples, therefore, Christians have 
gone on separating upon every possible question. They have 
divided, and subdivided, and resubdivided, until the Body of 
Christ has become torn and mangled as upon another Calvary. 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 167 

Look at the condition of the Protestant world. We find 
it first, broken into six great divisions — Lutherans, Presbyte- 
rians, Methodists, EpiscopaHans, Baptists, and Congregation- 
aHsts ; all of which are broken into smaller sects. The Bap- 
tists are divided into the Regular Baptists, Free-will Baptists, 
Seventh-day Baptists, Six-Principle Baptists, Anti-missionary 
Baptists, Disciples, Christians, Winebrennarians, Tunkers, 
Mennonites, etc. There are thirty different kinds of Method- 
ists. The Rev. Dr. McCosh, laboring to unite the Presbyte- 
rians, discovered that in the United States there are thirty- 
eight independent Presbyterian sects, and in Scotland ten 
more. To get an impressive view of the thing, look at the 
list of Protestant sects in England certified to by the Regis- 
trar-General. Besides the Established Church of England, he 
says there are the 

"Apostolics, Arminian New Society, Baptists, Baptized Believers, Be- 
lievers in Christ, Bible Christians, Bible Defence Association, Brethren 
Calvinists, Calvinistic Baptists, Catholic and Apostolic Church, Christians, 
Christians who object to be otherwise designated, Christian Believers, 
Christian Brethren, Christian Eliasites, Christian Israelities, Christian Tee- 
totalers, Christian Temperance Men, Christian Unionists, Church of Scot- 
land, Church of Christ, Countess of Huntingdon's Connection, Disciples in 
Christ, Electics, Episcopalian Dissenters, Evangelical Unionists, Followers 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, Free Grace Gospel Christians, Free Gospel Church, 
Free Christians, Free Church, Free Church (Episcopal), Free Church of 
England, Free Union Church, General Baptist, General Baptist Nev/ Con- 
nection, German Lutheran, Hallelujah Band, Independents, Independent 
Religious Reformers, Independent Unionists, Inghamites, Modern Method- 
ists, New Connection of Wesleyans, New Jerusalem Church, New Church, 
Old Baptists, Original Connection of Wesleyans, Plymouth Brethren, Pecul- 
iar People, Presbyterian Church in England, Primitive Methodists, Progres- 
sionists, Protestants adhering to the Articles of the Church of England I. 
to XVIII. inclusive, but rejecting order and ritual, Providence, Quakers, 
Ranters, Reformers, Reformed Presbyterians or Covenanters, Recreative 
Religionists, Refuge Methodists, Reform Free Church of Wesleyan Metho- 
dists, Revivalists, Salem Society, Sandemanians, Scotch Baptists, Second 
Advent Brethren, Separatists (Protestant), Seventh-day Baptists, Testi- 
mony Congregational Church, Trinitarians, Union Baptists, Unitarian 
Christian, United Christian Church, United Free Methodist Church, United 
Brethren or Moravians, United Presbyterian, Unitarian Baptists, Welsh 
Calvinistic Methodists, Welsh Free Presbyterians, Wesleyan Methodist 
Association, Wesleyan Reformers, and Wesleyan Reform Glory Band." 

This was the list ten years ago, and about three or four 



1 68 Divisions Hurt our Fellowship, 

have been added every year since. And America is still more 
prolific in sects, as it is in inventions of all sorts. This is the 
state of things among people for whom Christ prayed " that 
they all might be one," and upon whom the apostle enjoined 
" that there be no schism in the Body." 

DIVISION WRONG IN ITSELF. 

Interview any little band of sectarians, and they at once 
take up their Bibles to argue their opinions. But there is 
this opinion at the base of it all which they take for granted : 
" We hold the correct doctrine ; we see the truth clearer than 
our neighbors ; they are narrow-minded and short-sighted ; 
they will not come with us, so we must go together and leave 
them out." Now, it makes no difference how strong a house 
you build on a quicksand, it will sink ; and the most forcible 
sectarian argument amounts to nothing, as it starts from a 
false principle. Are you, indeed, mentally and theologically 
superior to your neighbors ? Are they ignorant and bigoted, 
and do you see farther into the Truth than they do ? Then, 
according to the Bible, you should stay with them and en- 
lighten them. St. Paul says : '' We that are stro7tg ougJit to 
bear tlie infirmities of the weak, a7id not to please ourselves y 
It is the intelligent and the strong-minded who are especially 
bound to sufferance and concession. 

Advanced Christians should be the very last to club togeth- 
er by themselves. If they have the spirit of the Gospel, they 
will say, " We will not take a step without our neighboring 
brethren ; if they tarry we will wait ; they may be prejudiced 
and uncultured and faulty, but the Church is not complete 
Avithout them ; we will subordinate our wishes till they see 
their way to join us ; we will not be separate from them." Par- 
tisans do not use such language as that, but it sounds veiy 
like Him who would not allow the fold to be shut around the 
ninety and nine while one poor sheep was yet away in the 
wilderness. 

Before any controversial defense is made, therefore, the 
sects are proved guilty. We have no right to divide because 
■we are right. The more clearly we see the truth, the more 
closely should we stand by those who do not see it. We may 
separate from the infidel and the immoral, but under no pre- 
tense from each other. Division among Christians is schism, 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 169 

and schism is prohibited under all circumstances. Says the 
Rev. John Angell James : 

" Nothing could be a more convincing priina facie argument to show 
me that my system of ecclesiastical polity, whatever it was, were unscrip- 
tural, than that it did not allow me consistently to associate with other 
Christians. I never could persuade myself that the system, be it what it 
might, could be a scriptural one which threw a bar across my path, and 
prevented me from visibly joining my fellow Christians in acts of fraternal 
intercourse." 

And the Rev. Edmund Squire, of Massachusetts, says : 

"If anything separates a professed Church of Christ, that fact proves it 
false, no matter what may cause the separation ; whether doctrine, or inter- 
pretation, or government, however true it may seem, however proven from 
God's Word it may seem ; the fact that it separates, proves that it is not 
love, and, therefore, that it is not Christ. A church of Christ is a church 
of love, and a church of love is a united church ; and, therefore, a divided 
church is Antichrist. You cannot overthrow this logic till you can over- 
throw God. God is love. 

" Sectarianism, therefore, is simply sin, because it is Antichrist ; its root 
is self ; its motto : ' My opinion ; ' ' My interpretation ; ' ' My name ; ' * My 
church.' It is the last device of Satan to damage a power which he cannot 
destroy." 

Examining into Scripture, we find that it condemns the 
sectarian without going into the- question whether his views 
are right or wrong. 

// tells us to avoid him. To the Romans St. Paul said : 
" Now, I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause 
divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have 
learned, and avoid them." 

It speaks of him as without light. The partisan boasts of 
his clear vision, his seeing into things, but the word of the 
Lord about it is this : '' If we walk in the light, as He is in 
the light, we have fellowship one with another." 

It considers hi^n without the Divine love. Says St. John : 
*' He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can 
he love God whom he hath not seen ? " It is no answer to 
this to say that we love our own party. Christian love is love 
for all Christians. A love that discriminates among them and 
treats as brethren only those of our sect, is not a Christian 
grace at all, but a sin to be repented of. Says the Rev. John 
Angell James : 

" To love only those of our own denomination, however intense may be 



170 Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 

the affection, so far from promoting the end we seek, resists and defeats it ; 
instead of furthering union, it is the very cause of divisions ; it is the root 
of bitterness, which grows not in the soil of charity, but of selfishness, and 
has sprung up to bring forth the poisonous fruits of bigotry and all unchar- 
itableness, whereby many have not only been defiled, but destroyed. Such 
a factious, schismatical love as this, instead of collecting, scatters ; instead 
of embodying, dissevers the Church, and puts the greater part of its mem- 
bers beyond the pale of Christianity. What is wanted, then, is a spirit of 
impartial, universal, and invincible love, which acknowledges, values, and 
accepts the image and superscription of Christ, stamped upon a truly re- 
newed heart, whatever may be on the obverse side of the coin ; a love 
which demands nothing else as a passport to its heart, and a warrant for 
the exercise of its regard, but the evidence of a ' like precious faith,' and 
the * common salvation ; ' and which, feeling that it would be an indignity 
to our divine Lord to have His attestation treated with suspicion till en- 
dorsed and accredited by the stamp of Episcopacy, Presbyterianism, or In- 
dependency, generously exclaims, ' Grace be with all them that love our 
Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity ! ' " 

It considers hhn a heretic. The New Testament regards any 
man who attaches himself to a party as a heretic, not to be 
allowed among the company of Christians. Said St. Paul to 
Titus : "^ man that is an heretic^ after the first and second ad- 
monition, rejectr The Greek word here rendered '^ heretic " 
Dr. Robinson defines thus : '^ A sectarist ; partisan ; one who 
founds or belongs to a sect." The Rev. Albert Barnes says 
of it : 

" The true notion of the word is that of one who is a promoter of a sect 
or party. The man who makes divisions in a church, instead of aiming to 
promote unity, is the one who is intended. Such a man may form sects and 
parties on some points of doctrine on which he differs from others, or on 
some custom, religious rite, or peculiar practice ; he may make some unim- 
portant matter a ground of distinction from his brethren, and may refuse to 
have fellowship with them, and endeavor to get up a new organization. 
Such a man, according to the Scriptures, is a heretic, and not merely one 
who holds a different doctrine from that which is regarded as orthodox." 

The Rev. Dr. Schmucker says : " The correct translation of 
the word is — a man that is a schismatic, a maker of divisions, 
or sects, or parties in the Church, and this translation is sus- 
tained by three-fourths of our best critics." Let any one look 
into our common Greek dictionary, Donnegan's *' Lexicon," 
and he will find the term, " Airesis," from which the word in 
question comes, defined thus : 

"The act of taking for one's self; a purpose, a preference, choice, or elec- 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 171 

tion ; also, the choice made, especially of a sect or mode of doctrine ; a 
school, a party, a sect or doctrine, a select or chosen body." 

All of which shows that the man who is so ready to divide 
from his brethren, and so zealous for his sect, had better not 
look into Scripture too closely, or he will find himself branded 
as a heretic, and ordered out of the Church altogether. 

It calls him sensual and carnal. We give conscientious 
opinions and preferences as the reason for our divisions, but 
Scripture says the reason is that we follow the flesh instead 
of the Spirit. '' These," says St. Jude, '^ be they who sepa- 
rate themselves, sensual, not having the Spirit." St. Paul has 
fastened upon our sect^ a word above all others expressive of 
God's utter abhorrence — ^^ carnal ^ '' Whereas there is among 
you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal ? " 
" While one saith — I am of Paul, and another I am of ApoUos, 
are ye not carnal ? " Says Bishop Mcllvaine : 

" St. Paul found some calling themselves of Paul, and others of Apollos, 
and others of Cephas, and others of Christ ; this was division and disunion^ 
and if he had not checked it then, the diversities of denominations would have 
soon become as bad in primitive times as they are now. Instead of saying 
that such things were 'very good,' St. Paul takes for granted that the root 
of them is evil. ' Are ye not carnal? ' said he. And is not our modern 
sectarianism carnality f It begets rivalry, and that is carnal ; competition, 
and that is carnal ; provocation, and that is carnal ; quarreling after revivals 
to see who shall have the converts, and that is carnal. This is no work of 
the Spirit of Christ ! God may bring some good out of it, as He does out 
of the wiles of the devil, and as He causes all things — in heaven, earth, and 
hell — to work together for good to those that love Him. But these things 
are not therefore good in themselves, or to be tolerated. They are carnal ; 
and those who tolerate them ' walk as men ' with ' carnal 7mnds.' " 

That is Episcopal testimony. Let us next hear what a 
venerable Presbyterian clergyman, Rev. Isaac E. Carey, says 
about it : 

" If the cliques and parties which existed in the ancient churches, without 
external separation or open schism, were works of the flesh, then much 
more are these modern divisions, by which the visible Church has been 
broken into fragments — disjecta mei7tbra of the torn body ; so that, according 
to all appearances, instead of there being only one Church — one great body, 
embracing all believers — there are many distinct churches, many rival, con- 
tending parties, separated from each other in walled enclosures, and seek- 
ing ascendency over each other. If the unavoidable differences among 
Christians were no just occasion for party strifes in the days of the apos- 
tles, then much less can they afford occasion for the separate, centralized 



172 Divuions Hurt our Fellowship, 

organizations which now appear on all sides as proofs of the overmastering 
power and the corrupting, destroying work Of the carnal nature in connection 
with our Christianity. As these divisions proceed from a principle which 
is directly hostile to the Spirit, they war against the very life of the Church 
of God. Being from a corrupt source, from which nothing good can come, 
they are themselves wholly corrupt and evil. They are no part of our 
Christianity. They are in no sense outgrowths from it, but from what is 
totally antagonistic to it. They are vampires sucking its life-blood. They 
are works of the devil joined externally to the work of Christ. They are in 
no way necessary to the Church, but a continual hindrance to its growth 
and progress. They no more belong to it than a serpent to the body it is 
crushing in its folds ; than sores and blotches to the otherwise fair face 
which they disfigure and render repulsive. They are life - destroying in 
their whole tendency and work." 

THE ORIGIN OF IT. 

The cause of this general rupture of Christian fellowship is 
human intermeddling. The Bible says the Church is the fabric 
of the Lord alone. 

" Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the 
saints, and of the household of God ; and are built upon the foundation of 
the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone ; 
in whom all the building fifty framed together groweth unto a holy temple 
in the Lord ; and in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of 
God through the Spirit." 

" Now hath GOD set the members EVERY ONE of thein IN the body 
(Church) as it hath pleased Him." " Who then is Paul, and who is Apol- 
los but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man ? 
I have planted ; Apollos watered ; but God gave the increase. So then 
neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth ; but God that 
giveth the increase." 

" I will build my Church," said Jesus. " It is a house made 
without hands." " THE LORD added to the Church daily such 
as should be saved." And yet ecclesiastical history is taken 
up with so-called Churches that men have planned, and built, 
and organized. The CHRISTIAN CHURCH was begun at Jeru- 
salem, on the day of Pentecost, by the Holy Spirit. The 
Romish sect was started at the Council of Constantinople in 
the year 547, by Justinian ; the Lutheran sect at Augsburg in 
1530, by Martin Luther; the Episcopal sect at London in 
1534, by Henry VHL ; the Baptist in Germany in 1536, by 
Menno Simon; the Presbyterian at Geneva in 1542, by John 
Calvin ; the Congregational in the North of England in 1602, by 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 173 

John Robinson; the Methodist at Oxford in 1729, by John 
Wesley; etc. 

These man-made institutions have their fellowship arranged 
by man. When human societies (Odd Fellows, Masons, etc.) 
receive a new-comer, they tell him their rules, and vote as to 
his admission. The sects likewise give out their " terms of com- 
munion^' and decide whether " We will receive the candidate 
into fellow^ship." In God's Church He Himself attends to the 
reception. The entrance to that house is in keeping of the 
Builder. " I am the Door," said Jesus. '' Come out from 
among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not 
the unclean thing ; and I will receive you, and will be a Father 
unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the 
Lord Almighty." 

Some things are not delegated. Choosing the household is 
one of them. God selects His own family. His children are 
spoken of as "Partakers of the Heavenly calling!' Member- 
ship in the divine Body has not been left to the caprice of 
every little sect in Christendom. God acknowledges now, and 
will acknowledge at the last day, not those who have our mark 
upon them, but those who have His. 

Man has not been endowed with faculties to perform that 
office. What are the conditions of entrance into the Church? 
Repentance and Faith — emotions of the inward heart concealed 
from human observation. No man certainly knows w^hether 
another has repented and believed. God alone can tell. How 
does one know that he himself is adopted into the Church ? 
God tells him : '' The Spirit itself beareth witness with our 
spirit that we are the children of God." It is a matter be- 
tween the Creator and the individual soul ; a matter to which 
no outsider is a party ; which will be made public only at that 
great day when the Books shall be opened, and hidden things 
be brought to light. 

And yet, our little human sects, started here, there, and 
over yonder, on all sorts of occasions, and by this, that, and 
the other human leader, act, each one, as if it were the Eter- 
nal Church of God, and posting officers at its door, assumes to 
regulate the solemn question of Christian Fellowship. Man, 
who left his modesty in the Garden of Eden, reaches here the 
summit of impertinence. 

Going back to the beginning of the trouble, we see that 



174 Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 

this human interference was the very point of the wedge. 
The apostles left the Church a united body. All Christians 
were members of the one Church universal, which had spread 
over considerable portions of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The 
responsibilty of membership was left with the Almighty ; the 
ministers of the Church did not assume to receive into the 
Church, but merely to acknowledge those whom God had re- 
ceived. When one had received the grace of God, he was 
recognized as a Christian brother without another question. 
Paul himself, who had been a persecutor, was welcomed into 
the fold on this" simple ground. " When James, Cephas, and 
John perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave 
to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship." (Galatians 
ii. 9). And when one was turned out, it was only on the 
ground that he had absolutely separated from Christ, and 
then being excluded from fellowship at one place, he was ex- 
cluded everywhere. 

This divine regulation of fellowship allowed every variety 
of opinion and form of worship without any discord or aliena- 
tion of feeling. A Christian of Asia, though Asiastic in his 
manners and observances, was at once received into commun- 
ion with the Churches in Europe, without being required to re- 
nounce his peculiarities. Irenseus says that while each retained 
his own customs they held communion with each other. The 
bishop of Csesarea, in a letter to Cyprian, in the year 256, says : 

** The Church of Rome has many particulars of divine worship, which are 
not precisely the same observances as prevail in Jerusalem. So likewise, in 
a very great number of other provinces, many things vary according to the 
diversity of place and people ; but, nevertheless, these variations have at no 
time infringed the peace and unity of the cathohc (or universal) Church." 

This unity might have continued till the end of time had 
not men interfered to do God's work and say who should be 
received into Christian fellowship. The first rent in the 
Church, the division between the Greek and Latin Christians, 
has streamed v/ith hate and blood for sixteen hundred years, 
and is as deep a chasm to-day as ever, and it was started by a 
proud prelate undertaking to say who should be in and who 
should be out of the kingdom of Christ. Toward the end of 
the second century, Victor, bishop of Rome, broke commun- 
ion with the Asiatic Churches, and excluded them from fel- 
lowship because they would not adopt the time of the Western 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 175 

Churches as to the celebration of Easter^ a feast that the New 
Testament says nothing about. This dissension was healed 
for a time by the wise counsels of Irenaeus, but it broke out 
again in the next century, when Stephen, bishop of Rome, 
dissolved fellowship with the Asiatic Churches on the ques- 
tion of the re-baptism of repentant heretics. Thus did our 
schisms begin by men presuming, on mere questions of cere- 
mony and opinion, to determine the limits of Christian 
communion. 

SCRIPTURE FELLOWSHIP. 

When men usurp the functions of the Lord they always 
make a blunder of it ; and it is evident now that the sects 
have gone on a wrong principle from the very start. The 
basis of our fellowship was a thing about which our Saviour 
was very particular. He made it the object of His New Com- 
mandment, which reads as follows : 

"^ new C07nmandment I give unto you, that ye love one an- 
other ; AS I HAVE LOVED YOU, that ye also love one another T 

He did not expect our love to equal His, but resemble it ; 
not to be of the same strength, but of the same kind. A dew- 
drop cannot hold the sun, but the sparkle it does give will be 
true sunlight. What, then, was the peculiarity of the Saviour's 
love ? 

It was a love that overlooked differences. 

This rule of fellowship was indeed a new commandment. 
Men affiliated only with those who were like them, or agreed 
with them. There were lines of friendship everywhere around 
sets and parties and accordant souls. But Christ said nothing 
about Friendship. The word is not used in the New Testa- 
ment but once, and then in disparagement — " The friendship 
of the world is enmity with God." It is a word altogether 
too narrow for Christianity. 

So with Patriotism — much lauded among men, but not 
mentioned in the Gospel. At the meeting of the Evangel- 
ical Alliance at New York in 1873, the Stars and Stripes of 
America and the Union Jack of England were folded togeth- 
er, showing that national distinctions were unknown there. 
Germany and France had just been engaged in mortal strife. 
Pastor Fisch, of Paris, said : '' It is a blessing to be here in 
this great assembly where there are neither German nor 



176 Divisions Hurt our Fellowship, 

French ; no boundaries, no nation." And then Dr. Christ- 
leib, of Bonn, arose and said : *' This is a time when Germany 
forgets the other Germans, and extends its hands to the 
French brethren. The fathers of our faith are already one 
before the Throne, and their children also should be one." 
As he spoke, he turned toward the chair of Pastor Fisch with 
outstretched arm. The Frenchman rose and clasped the ex- 
tended palm. The scene that ensued is utterly indescribable. 
Men and women clapped their hands, stamped their feet, 
waved handkerchief^, cheered, hurrahed, laughed, wept. 
Round after round of deafening applause rolled through 
the hall, died away, and then burst forth again with new 
ardor. What did it all mean ? It meant that Christian fel- 
lowship could not be limited by geographical boundaries ; 
that whatever their country or race, every disciple loved every 
other disciple. At one time there were seen on that platform 
Hindoos, Africans, and Europeans — sons of Shem, Ham, and 
Japhet — all praising God together. Around the tower of 
Babel men were dispersed ; around the Cross they come to- 
gether again. 

So with Social distinctions. Matthew was rich, the other 
disciples poor. It made no difference. In heaven, the rich 
Joseph of Arimathea is one with the poor Joseph the car- 
penter ; and the beggar Lazarus reposes in the bosom of the 
princely Abraham. Wealth may raise up different classes in 
society, but not in the Church. Whether we come in a car- 
riage or on foot, we sit together at the Table of the Lord. 

So, also, Christian fellowship is not to be affected by differ- 
ences of Temperament and Taste. The careful James frater- 
nized with the impulsive Matthew, and the gentle John with 
the impetuous Peter. As the aeronaut rises into the upper 
air, he comes to a point where all the discordant sounds of 
the earth, the rattle of wheels, the chime of bells, the roll of 
drums, the laugh of the child, and the moan of the beggar, 
meet and blend in harmony. So are Christians, lifted into 
the fellowship of Jesus, to be too high to mind these distinc- 
tions of the' lower atmosphere. 

DIFFERENCE OF OPINION. 

The same rule applies to difference of opinion. 

Note : The apostles did not company with those who denied 



Divisions Hurt oitr Fellowship. lyy 

the Faith. As to the great central Truth of Christianity, the 
first Christians were one, as all true Christians are now. St, 
John expressly declares, " If there come any unto you, and 
bring not this doctrine " (concerning the person of Christ, His 
real and not feigned appearance in the flesh, as the Gnostics 
asserted), " receive him not into your house, neither bid him 
God-speed ; for he that biddeth him God-speed is partaker of 
his evil deeds." John was the very embodiment of love, but 
he was not compliant or negative about the Gospel. When 
he lived at Ephesus, according to Polycarp his disciple, he 
went into the public bath, and seeing there one who pre- 
tended to be a Christian and yet denied Christ, he turned 
back, refusing to remain in the same building with him. 
''Who is a liar," says he, " but he that denieth that Jesus is 
the Christ 7 " " Many deceivers," said he again, " are entered 
into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in 
the flesh : this is a deceiver and an Antichrist." St. Peter 
does not mince words when he says, " There shall be false 
teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable 
heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them." St. 
Paul tells the Galatians that he would that certain ones 
among them be cut off. Who were they ? They who made 
Chris: of none effect by preaching another gospel, denying 
that salvation is by grace. Twice over does he tell them : 
" Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other 
gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, 
let him be accursed." 

It is clear, then, that we are to be of one mind and one 
judgment as to the Faith^ and we are not to fellowship with 
those who reject it. Christianity is uncompromising and 
unsociable on this point. It would not allow an image of 
Christ to be placed in the Roman Pantheon to be worshiped 
along with heathen deities, and it cannot company now with 
the infidel philosophies, materialisms, spiritualisms, and false 
religions around us. 

But difference of ofinion was not to disturb our fellowship 
in the least. The command is plain and peremptory : " Him 
that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful dis- 
putations." If a man holds to the Cross ; if he is right on the 
vital thing — " What shall I do to be saved ?" — we are to fel- 
lowship with him, though he may be in error on a thousand 

12 



lyS Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 

questions. We are to take him as he is, recognizing him as a 
Christian, without argument. As to all matters of Church 
order and ritual and government, all opinions about the Gos- 
pel, we are told, " Let every man be fully persuaded in his 
own mind." '* Why dost thou judge thy brother, or why dost 
thou set at nought thy brother ? " 

On this central point of our subject let us hear what others 
say. 

The excellent Bishop Shirley, of the Church of England, 
said : 

" I want to see the doors of the Church made as wide as the doors of 
Heaven." 

Stillingfleet said : 

" There ought to be no terms of communion but those which are terms 
of salvation ; and he that is good enough for Christ is good enough for me." 

The late venerable Dr. Hodge, of the Presbyterian Semi- 
nary at Princeton, said : 

" The rule which Christ has laid down on this subject is, that what He 
requires as a condition for the admission into His kingdom in heaven, is to 
be required as a condition of admission into His kingdom on earth. Noth- 
ing more and nothing less is to be demanded. We are to receive all those 
whom Christ receives. No degree of knowledge, no confession, beyond 
that which was necessary to salvation, can be demanded as a condition of 
our recognizing any one as a Christian brother, and treating him as such. 
Philip baptized the eunuch on the confession, ' I believe that Jesus Christ is 
the Son of God ' (Acts viii. 37) ; ' Him that is weak in faith receive ye, 
but not to doubtful disputations ' (Romans xiv. i) ; ' Who art thou that 
judgest another man's servant ? to his own master he standeth or falleth ' 
(verse 4) ; ' Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God ' 
(i John V. i). For men to reject from their fellowship those whom God 
receives into His, is an intolerable assumption. All those terms of church 
communion which have been set up beyond the creditable profession of 
faith in Christ, are usurpations of an authority which belongs to Him alone." 

That leading Presbyterian divine. Prof. Francis L. Patton, 
D.D., says : 

" Suppose a case. A lady comes to me and says : * I would like to unite 
with your church, but have difficulty with some of your doctrines.' I should 
say : ' Do you know that you are a sinner ? Do you know that you have a 
Saviour ? Do you trust in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ ? ' And if 
she should say, ' Yes, I do ; ' I should say, ' Do you wish to take your place 
with God's people and join them in commemorating our Lord's death ? ' 



Divisions Hurt otir Fellowship. 179 

It she should say, ' I do ; ' I should say, 'Come into the church. It may 
be you will get light on these other questions by and by.' Any one whom 
I have reason to believe Christ would admit into heaven, 1 would admit to 
the Lord's table. And, therefore, I would admit to the communion-table 
and receive into the church many whose theological views I could not 
approve, and who could not subscribe to the Confession of Faith." 

From the Congregationalists, the Rev. J. H. D. Henderson 

says : 

" By those whom ' Christ receives,' I simply mean those who seriously 
profess to believe in, and receive Jesus Christ as their Saviour. I under- 
stand the Bible to teach that Jesus Christ receives all who receive Him. 
' Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.' .' He that believeth in 
the Son hath everlasting life.' The simple Gospel platform is : ' Receive 
all who apply for admittance, seriously professing to believe in, and receive 
Jesus Christ as their Saviour ; and retain all who, by a life of piety and obe- 
dience, prove themselves His true disciples.' " 

And the Rev. Richard G. Greene remarks : 

" ' Every spirit that confesseth [/. ^., with the heart] that Jesus Christ is 
come in the flesh, is of God.' Who are they that set themselves up to 
judge and discharge another man's servant, because he is weak, or lame, 
or blind, or in any way uncouth ? Cannot the Lord order His own ? Who 
of us is not weak ? Those who exclude from Christ's house, on any pre- 
text, any who are humbly following Him, even though afar off, and who 
are crying to Him out of even an ignorant faith, are not thereby adminis- 
tering Christ's one Church ; but they are making some little private syna- 
gogue of their own, some little nest of infallibility, in which they sit in spir- 
itual pomp like little popes. They may be good people, well-intending, and 
very wise ; but * the foolishness ' of God is wiser than they ; and what they 
build is really only a dignified, select, precise, well-ordered, logically-trained, 
orthodox sectT 

Considering the matter from the Bible stand-point, these 
learned divines of different denominations perfectly agree, and 
their testimony shows us undoubtedly what was the fellow- 
ship of the Gospel Church. There was just as much variety 
of opinion among the New Testament Christians as among 
us, but they did not allow it to divide them. So often had 
Jesus to settle the ciscussions between His disciples, that it is 
clear no two of them had the same ideas. In the apostolic 
council at Jerusalem, we are told " there was much disputing." 
Then, as now, some were conservative, others progressive ; 
some were ceremonious, and others off-hand, but their diver- 
sity did not interrupt their companionship. 



i8o Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 

They sometimes felt called upon to utter rebuke, but they 
did not disown each other. Paul differed from Peter, and 
disapproved of his conduct so much that, says he, " At An- 
tioch I withstood him to the face, for he was to be blamed," 
yet neither of them dreamed of forming a sect on his distinct- 
ive views. Paul and Barnabas had a sharp contention about 
their missionary arrangements, but it never entered their 
minds to break fellowship on the matter. 

The pitiful excuse is sometimes offered for our sects, '' Be- 
cause we differ so ! " The fact is, no Christian denominations 
in this land are so wide apart in opinion and practice as were 
the Jew and Gentile converts of the apostolic Church. The 
Jew clung with reverence to the ancient ritual of his fore- 
fathers, while the Gentile looked on it with contempt. There 
was between the two races a bitter personal prejudice. The 
Jew was taught to look on the Gentile as accursed of God, 
and unfit for social intercourse. He thought it sinful to eat 
with him or sleep under the same roof, and the Gentile re- 
turned the feeling with scorn and hate, and persecuted him 
at every chance. These inveterate foes, who called each 
other dogs, were, when converted, brought by the apostles 
into mutual fellowship, and included in the same one Church. 
Side by side they knelt at the Mercy-seat, and sat at the Sup- 
per of the Lord. The great Brotherhood stretched over all 
incongruities ; and as eternal proof that dissimilarity is no bar 
to Christian oneness, stands the fact that no Jew or Gentile 
sect was ever formed. 

It took time for the apostles to learn this lesson. Peter 
started out with quite an idea of whom he would select for 
fellowship, but he was taught by a vision from heaven that 
he was not to call common or unclean those whom God had 
cleansed ; and his words ought to be written over the door 
of every sanctuary : " Of a truth I perceive that God is no re- 
specter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him 
and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him." 

And throughout all those early years after the apostles, 
when the Church was united and powerful, just as much dif- 
ference of opinion existed among Christians as now. The 
writings of the Fathers show that they had all the varieties 
of thought that we have. They did not agree as to the ob- 
servance of the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday). Our Seventh-day 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship, i8i 

Baptists hold certain views on this point and separate from 
other Christians ; the early disciples equally differed about it, 
and kept together. There is preserved a letter from the ven- 
erable Irenaeus, to Victor, Bishop of Rome, as to the observ- 
ance of Easter, which shows how the first Christians did. He 
says : 

" Though the earlier bishops themselves did not keep it, they were not 
the less at peace with those from churches where it was kept, w^henever 
they came to them. Neither at any time did they cast off any merely for 
the sake of form. But those very presbyters before thee, who did not ob- 
sen^e it, sent the Eucharist to those of churches who did. And when the 
blessed Poly carp went to Rome, in the time of Anicetus, and they had a 
little difference among themselves, about other matters also, they were 
immediately reconciled, not disputing much with one another on this head. 
Which things being so, they C077imu7ied together, and in the Church Ani- 
cetus yielded to Polycarp ; they separated from each other in peace, all the 
Church being at peace, both those that obser\'e and those that did not 
observ^e, maintaining the peace." — Eusebiiis, Book V., chap. 24. 

That learned Christian writer, Origen, born eighty-five years 
after the death of St. John, also gives valuable testimony on 
this point. He says : 

" From the beginning there were different opinions among believing Chris- 
tians as to the selection of the books to be regarded as divine. Moreover, 
whilst the apostles were yet preaching, "and those who were eye-witnesses 
were teaching the things which they had learned of Jesus, there was not a 
little dispute among the Jewish believers, concerning those Gentiles who 
embraced the Christian doctrines, whether it was their duty to obsen/e the 
Jewish rites ; or whether the burden of cleaij and unclean meats might not 
be removed, as unnecessary, from those among the Gentiles who abandon 
the customs of their fathers and believe in Jesus. And in the epistles of 
Paul we perceive that in the time of those who had seen Jesus, some were 
found who called in question the resurrection, and disputed whether it had 
not already taken place ; and also concerning the day of the Lord, whether 
it was just at hand or not ; there never has been a subject, whose principles 
are of any moment and of importance in life, concerning which different 
opinions have not existed." 

In short, the early Christians exercised their liberty of 
opinion as freely as we do, but they also obeyed the Divine 
command against schism, and notwithstanding their differ- 
ences, they clung together and maintained the oneness of the 
Church. 



1 82 Divisions Hurt oitr Fellowship, 



THE DIVINE EXAMPLE. 

The example was given in Christ's own fellowship with His 
disciples. He was from heaven, they from earth ; He was 
divine, they human. No words can express the contrast be- 
tween His spotless purity, His celestial tone, His infinite 
reach of thought, and their dull, stupid, and narrow concep- 
tions ; yet Christ walked with them, ate with them, and wor- 
shiped with them in loving fellowship, as an elder brother ; 
yes, with the coarsest and faultiest of them. And this utter 
sinking of all difference under the sea of love, was the model 
He set for them, for us, and for all time — ^^As I have loved 
you.'' 

This is the foundation principle of Christian fellowship. 
When a man repents and believes, then as a member of 
Christ's Body he is to make his confession and join the com- 
pany of Christians around him. They are not to examine his^ 
peculiarities, nor he theirs. All edges and corners are to be 
left alone. For them to reject him, or for him to reject them 
on account of differences, would be schism. As good Bishop 
Davenant says : " You cannot forbid communion in any par- 
ticular church to one who is a member of Christ's Universal 
Church." We are to accept all that the Lord accepts ; we 
are to impose no further conditions than Scripture imposes. 
" Other sheep I have," said Jesus to His Jewish disciples, 
'' which are not of this fold ; them also I must bring, and 
they shall hear my voice." He did not say that these other 
strange sheep were to adopt the Hebrew methods and tradi- 
tions ; they were to be received into the one Flock, not be- 
cause of any conformity to them, but because they were His. 
The rule was — no skipping ; no choosing among Christians 
of congenial associates ; no selecting whatever from the com- 
munity of beHevers, but a fellowship impartial and compre- 
hensive as that of Jesus Himself. 

The key-note of the whole thing was given by our Lord in 
these words : ^^Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself'' 

And who is my neighbor? What Jesus meant by that 
word is just what we mean by it. My neighbor is the one 
who lives next to me, the one who passes me on the side- 
walk, and whose elbow touches mine in the market-place. 
He is the one I am to commune with and love. He may 



Divisions Htirt our Fellowship, 183 

differ from me in a thousand ^vays, but I am not to pass him 
by on the other side. This is the meaning of the parable of 
the Good Samaritan. My neighbor is not the disciple here 
or there, who thinks as I think; but the one whose journey 
has brought him alongside of me, the one who is toiling and 
struggling and suffering where I am. He may be of mixed 
descent, and I of the regular succession ; he may be illiterate, 
and I brought up at the feet of Gamaliel ; he may live in a 
hut, and I in a marble front ; he may laugh loud and sing 
uproariously and pray like a stentor, and I may affect religious 
delicacy and reserve — in a word, he may be all that is com- 
pressed in that name, Samaritan, and I may be all that is 
meant by the term, Jew ; no matter ; he is my neighbor, and 
to him must my first affections reach out. Not even natural 
ties are to precede this Christian affiliation with those who 
are nearest me. " Who is my mother, and who are my breth- 
ren ? " said the Master. " xA.nd He stretched forth His hand 
toward His disciples, and said. Behold, my mother and my 
brethren." 

THIS FELLOWSHIP BROKEN UP. 

Our denominations break up this Gospel fellowship. What 
is a denomination? It is a group, not of Christian neighbors, 
but of a Christian sort. Neighbor A has certain opinions 
and tastes ; neighbors B, C, and D differ from him ; but neigh- 
bors I, O, and U think as he thinks, whereupon these vowels 
club together, apart from the other letters, and form a sect. 
They call the little cabal their communion. They get up a 
platform of their opinions, and fellowship with similar cabals 
in the next county and the next State who stand on their 
platform.. The Church in every town is thus decomposed, 
and its elements bottled up in kinds. This congregation per- 
mits no forms that are not three hundred years old, that 
congregation has none that do not spring up at the moment ; 
these people are all Calvinists, those are all Arminians ; some 
follow after Paul, others after ApoUos, and others after 
Cephas. 

All that George Whitefield asked about a man was, '' Is he 
a Christian?" But the sect inquires, " How much water did 
you use when you were baptized ? " '' Do you kneel or sit at 
the Lord's Supper?" "What is your view of fore-ordina- 
tion?" etc. And one is not welcomed unless he is willing to 



184 Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 

conform to the Baptist or Episcopal or Presbyterian methods 
and views. Over the porch of the Old South meeting-house 
in Boston were chiselled the words : '' Behold, I have set be- 
fore you an open door." After the great fire, however, the 
Government used the building for some time, and then a sign 
was put under the porch : '' Positively no admittance." So, 
God has inscribed over the door of His Church : '' Whosoever 
will, let him come." But as we draw near we find the sects have 
added the postscript : '' No admittance except in our way." 

These sectarian conditions of fellowship often go into mi- 
nute particulars. Some require their members to testify in 
court by affirmation instead of upon oath ; others to wash 
each other's feet ; others to fasten their coats with hooks and 
eyes instead of buttons. Says the Christian at Work : 

" A sick woman was recently dismissed by certificate from a Presby- 
terian church in New York, to a church in Hoboken. Too ill to attend 
church — in fact, she was upon her death-bed — she was visited by a dele- 
gated elder, whose office it was to examine the candidate ; when the fol- 
lowing precious questions were propounded : 
" ' Are you opposed to secret societies ? ' 
" ' Do you not think the singing of hymns to be wrong ? ' 
" ' Do you favor an amendment to the Constitution concerning the rec- 
ognition of God ? ' 

" What answer the poor woman made we do not know ; we only know 
that she died two days afterward, and we can imagine the delight with which 
she entered that Celestial Gate, where an answer to such conundrums is 
not required." 

Generally, these sectarian stipulations are strictly enforced. 
St. Paul was received into the Church because he had felt the 
grace of God, but no amount of grace will satisfy the sect 
unless its opinions are agreed to. Timothy Dwight was a 
noble Christian in his day. To him, under God, was chiefly 
due the victory over the early infidelity of our Republic. 
Before him, as President of Yale College, passed one-third of 
the men, who at that period entered our learned professions, 
and so powerfully did he defend the Gospel that a skeptic 
scarcely ever left his halls. His beautiful hymn — 

** I love Thy kingdom. Lord, 
The house of Thine abode," 

is everywhere sung. And yet, were Dr. Dwight here now, 
four out of five of our denominations would refuse him fel- 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 185 

lowship. One, because he believed in predestination ; an- 
other, because he joined in when the students in the college 
chapel started up old '' Coronation." One sect would keep 
him out because he was not in the regular succession, and 
another because he was not immersed. 

The sectarian apology for breaking up our Scripture fellow- 
ship is, that though all very beautiful in theory it will not 
work in practice. To get along in peace, they tell us. Chris- 
tians must be sorted out and kept apart. A prominent de- 
nominational leader in New York not long ago publicly de- 
fended our divisions by saying : 

" We have our creeds for the purpose of showing or defining each other's 
peculiar views of what we believe ; but then, these differences, after all, 
are matters of small account. You may be Presbyterians, Methodists, 
Baptists — each have their own httle plats; and it is best so. You know," 
said he, " the story of Pat and Bridget, who did not hve very peaceably. 
They at first had a tiff, and were quietly sitting by the fireside, when Pat 
said, * Bridget, look at that cat on one side and the dog on the other — how 
pleasantly they get along now ! Why can't you and I live like that ? ' 
'Ah!' said Bridget, 'just tie them together for life, and you'll soon see 
how they'd get along together.' These are my views on such matters." 

Let us look into that. This D.D. illustrates Gospel fellow- 
ship by a cat and a dog tied together. This is wrong ; for Gos- 
pel fellowship does not tie or pinion people together at all ; 
it is not an outward bond or organization, as a sect is, but a 
link of affection. In the very hymn-book that this man uses 
are the words, 

" Blest is the tie that binds 
Our hearts in Christian love." 

Again, it is not the fastening together of cats and dogs. It 
is remarkable that while Christ always likens Christians to 
sheep and lambs, sectarians invariably speak of them as cats 
and dogs. From their account you would think the Church 
a menagerie, requiring the strongest iron bars to keep the 
beasts from eating each other up. That is another libel. It 
is these very leaders who keep up the contention. Let them 
take away their human interpretations and catechisms and 
controversies, and not one Christian in a hundred would ever 
think of these things we are divided about. 

In June, 1866, there met in the old Dutch sanctuary on the 
Heights, the first and only convention of the Church of Brook- 



1 86 Divisions Hurt our~ Fellowship, 

lyn. The spacious edifice was crowded, and delegates and 
pastors from over seventy congregations of all the evangelical 
sects, met under the specific call of a '' Convention of the 
Church of Brooklyn." The vast assembly prayed and sung 
together ; glowing addresses were made by clergymen of dif- 
ferent denominations, and all hearts throbbed as they felt 
their oneness in Christ. Good old Dr. Waterbury declared 
he had never felt so near heaven before in all his life. It was 
complete love and harmony until, by preconcerted arrange- 
ment, three sectarian ministers, under the influence of this 
very New York leader, one after the other arose and spoke 
against the whole thing. They acknowledged their brethren 
as Christians, they said, but they could not fellowship as one 
Church in this way those who had not been immersed. 
Their words pierced the assembly like daggers ; counte- 
nances dropped, and tears of vexation and shame filled 
many eyes. The meeting was murdered ; it adjourned with- 
out a word of reply, and has never been held since. 

That is how we come by the reputation of cats and dogs. 
These partisan leaders will acknowledge, as this man did, that 
*' our differences are matters of small account," yet they will 
spend their lives in keeping up these differences. Loving the 
power their party gives them, they will turn all our funds into 
sectarian channels, give every Christian student a sectarian 
education, pervert every revival to sectarian advantage, put 
every mission on a sectarian basis, crush down every yearning 
effort for union, and then tell the world that we, simple- 
minded Christians, are such ferocious combatants it would 
never do for us to sit on the same side of the fire-place ! Let 
these partisan leaders all go off for six months on a trip to 
Palestine and leave us alone with our Bibles, and Christian 
oneness would come of itself before they got back. 

Love united Christians of all nations and ranks and opin- 
ions, eighteen hundred years ago, and kept them united for 
centuries. Why cannot it do so now ? Has the Gospel 
changed ? Has it weakened with age ? Has the Holy Spirit 
lost His power? No! The trouble is, we have allowed 
human masters to dictate our fellowship, we have allowed 
unscriptural tests to be set up — in a word, we have departed 
from the Bible ; let us come back to the Bible, and we will 
come back to each other. 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship, 187 



THE lord's supper. 

We cannot deal justly with the subject of fellowship with- 
out considering the feast given by Christ especially to mani- 
fest it. In the Lord's Supper we appear as members of the 
same family, having one common interest, one common pil- 
grimage, and one final home. We eat of one loaf and drink 
from one cup. In many Oriental nations those who break 
bread together are by that act made friends and allies ; if they 
have quarreled, they are then pledged to peace. And the 
crudest believer sees that this holy table is no place for divis- 
ion and strife. 

A missionary in New Zealand once gathered his Maori con- 
verts to a communion service. One man who had been kneel- 
ing at the chancel-rail, suddenly got up and went away, but 
after a while came back and received the bread and wine. 
Upon inquiring the reason of this conduct, the man said that 
he found himself kneeling at the side of one who had killed 
his father. On resuming his seat, however, he thought he 
heard a voice say, '' By this shall all men know that ye are 
my disciples, if ye have love one to another." This overcame 
him, and he went back and communed with his former enemy. 

The distinctions which separate what are called the various 
classes of society vanish here. The Duke of Wellington 
understood it. An old pauper from the workhouse once 
knelt by his side at the Lord's Supper, not knowing who he 
was. The pew-opener came and touched him, and beckoned 
him to wait till the Duke had partaken ; but the great com- 
mander noticing the movement, caught the old man by the 
hand and whispered, " Do not move ; do not move ; we are 
all equal here ! " 

In the abstract, we all agree to this. For instance, not a 
Christian in the United States but would say that the Hiri- 
doo castes should not appear at the Table of the Lord. The 
feeling of caste is so strong in India, that a soldier lying 
wounded on the battle-field has been known to die rather 
than drink water offered him by one of a lower caste. A sick 
soldier in the hospital at Aga, suffered for two hours rather 
than receive water from an English lady. His words were, 
" Though no man see me drink, God will see it." 



1 88 Divisions Hurt our Fellowship, 

Says Bishop Thompson : 

" During our journey through India, while cooking breakfast by the road- 
side one morning, I was moving toward some little children, whose mother 
was cooking, probably for some coolies at work on the road, with some 
presents from our table in my hand, when Dr. Butler arrested me, saying 
that my touch was pollution ; that nothing would be eaten that I bore ; 
that my foot set within the circle where the woman was cooking would 
defile everything within it." 

Such exclusiveness as that may be sanctioned by ignorant 
conscience and by ages immemorial, but we all feel that it 
must not appear at the Lord's Supper. 

The first missionaries to India reasoned with their converts 
on this great evil, but the natives becoming angry, the mis- 
sionaries temporized with the wrong ; and so, under the genial 
example of Schwartz and the mild sway of Bishop Heber, 
caste was every year becoming more deeply rooted in the 
Hindoo Churches. This was the state of things when Daniel 
Wilson was appointed the English Bishop of India. Wilson, 
seeing that caste was utterly inconsistent with Christian broth- 
erhood, gave out that the brethren must thereafter come to- 
gether at the Table of the Lord. Intense excitement fol- 
lowed. A majority of the natives determined to abandon 
the Church, the catechists refused to teach, and it seemed 
that the missions would be broken up. The Government 
authorities interfered, and requested allowance for Hindoo 
prejudices ingrained in the national life. Wilson was inflex- 
ible. He did not consider a Christianity that allowed caste 
at the Lord's Supper was worth preserving ; and so, with his 
own hands, he laid hold of the ancient barriers. It was in 
1835, at Trichinopoly : coming out of the vestry-room in his 
episcopal robes at morning service, he saw the main body of 
the congregation, the Pariahs, sitting on the floor as usual, 
and the Soodras, the higher caste, who refused to sit with 
them, standing apart in scattered groups. Instead of going 
into the chancel, the bishop went down among the people ; 
he took a Soodra in one hand and a Pariah in the other, led 
them forward to a bench in front and seated them together ; 
his chaplain and several EngHsh friends with him did the 
same. Then the bishop ascended the pulpit and delivered a 
sermon on the words, " Preaching peace by Jesus Christ." 
Then at the communion he gave it first to a Soodra, then to 



Divisio7is Hurt our Fclloivship, . 189 

a Pariah ; then to an English g:.ntleman, then to another 
Soodra ; then to an English lady of high rank who was 
providentially present, and then to a common Pariah. Si- 
lently it went on, until one hundred and forty-seven of all 
grades had taken the bread and wine without distinction ; 
and from that time the Churches of India have been freed 
from the obstructions of caste. 

Throughout Christendom this bold proceeding was hailed 
with applause, and all felt that the bishop had done a noble 
and Christian deed. 

What shall we say, then, to the fact that among Christians 
themselves, caste, as shameful as that which separated Hin- 
doo from Hindoo, exists to this day, everywhere ; yes, in 
Hindostan itself! Says Dr. McLeod : 

" I one day met an American missionary, and asked him why he did not 
work with the other American missionaries laboring in India. He replied : 
'There were differences among them which did not admit of union.' 
' What,' said I, * are these differences ? ' ' Well,' said he, ' one tremendous 
thing is they sing hymns ! ' That is an excellent man ; but I could not 
help saying his was the worst Brahminism I had ever seen in India." 

Dr. Jessup also wrote from Syria that the missions there 
were badly hurt by the Presbyterian psalm-singers refusing to 
commune with the Presbyterian hymn-singers. 

In our own land we see this Table fenced around by sects 
against each other, and Christian Soodras everywhere refusing 
to partake of the Lord's Supper with Christian Pariahs. A 
correspondent of the Herald of Gospel Liberty states that 
he not long ago attended church, and found it was a commun- 
ion season. Before the emblems were passed, the following 
notice was given by the preacher : 

" All that are of the same faith and order — and these only — are invited 
*o this table. Members of other churches or denominations may simply re- 
main away from the table or retire before sacrament, just as they prefer. 
We now pause for a separation between the membership of this and other 
churches and for the coming forward of those entitled to participate." 

The Rev. Dr. Bunting, of Galveston, relates the following 
incident : 

" A Presbyterian evangelist entered an obscure village in Louisiana some 
years ago, where the only church was a Baptist. With a heart enkindled 



IQO Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 

by the love of the Master for all, he went to work zealously for the harvest ; 
and the result was such a revival as the little town had never before known. 
All hearts rejoiced in the shower of blessings, and many were converted. 
As the special work drew to an end, a day of baptism and communion was 
appointed. More than a score sat down for the first time at the commun- 
ion table ; and in the midst sat the evangelist, who was their father in the 
Lord. It was a trying occasion to all ; but the law must be observed, and 
so the evangelist was passed by. He waited patiently until all were through, 
and the elements replaced ; and then, rising in his place, said quietly : ' May 
not the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the Master's table ? ' The 
effect was overpowering — ministers and people burst into tears. By com- 
mon consent the Sacrament was administered to the man of God in their 
midst, and the shadow of close communion in that church disappeared in 
the pure light of a Christ-like love and liberty." 

Presuming to decide who are " entitled to participate," and 
putting their deacons before it as a detective police, these 
sects have made it harder to reach the Lord's Table on earth 
than the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven. 

Solemn protests have been made against such castes in the 
Church. The Baptist John Bunyan, having been rescued 
from prison by the efforts of a Quaker, would commune with 
his unimmersed brethren. The Baptist Robert Hall declared : 
*' No man or set of men is entitled to prescribe as an indis- 
pensable condition of communion what the New Testament 
has not enjoined as a condition of salvation." And the Bap- 
tist Charles H. Spurgeon has said : 

" There is not a Christian beneath the scope of God's heaven from whom 
I am separated. If any man were to tell me that I am separatee from the 
Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, or the Methodist, I would tell him he did not 
know me, for I love them with a pure heart, fervently, and I am not sepa- 
rate from them. 

''The pulse of Christ is communion ; and woe to the Church that seeks 
to cure the ills of Christ's Church by stopping its pulse. I think it a sin to 
refuse to commune with any one who is a member of the Church of our 
Lord Jesus Christ." 

Yet, notwithstanding such individual protests, our denomi- 
nations are gradually widening their ruptures of this blessed 
feast. It is becoming more and more a mere sectarian cere- 
mony. The din and smoke of controversy surround it every- 
where. Every sect has its own table, and es ablishes its own 
terms of admission, and every village in our land has several 
distinct communions separated by religious caste. 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 191 

One of the most sacred relics of Papal superstition, is the 
Holy Grail, of the cathedral of San Lorenzo, in Genoa. It is 
an old cup, captured during the Crusades, and said to be the 
very dish out of which the Saviour and His disciples partook 
of their Last Supper. It has been roughly used. The troops 
of Napoleon I. carried it from Genoa to Paris, and the Allies 
restored it in 1813. Among these wars and fightings it has 
been broken. And the still more delicate thing it symbolizes 
— the fellowship of the Church — has likewise been broken. 
Jostled and jarred by the contentions of our partisan war- 
riors, the heavenly fabric is shattered ; the one Brotherhood 
so sacredly preserved by the early Christians, is gone. 

It all comes from our usurping an office which God never 
committed to us. 

While the American army was at Morristown, Gen. Wash- 
ington, who was an Episcopalian, inquired of Dr. Johnes, the 
Presbyterian clergyman of the village, if he could come to the 
communion which was to be held the next Sabbath. " Most 
certainly," replied the doctor ; " ours is not the Presbyterian 
table, but the Lord's table." "I am glad to hear it," said 
Washington, " that is as it ought to be." This most evident 
fact is continually forgotten. It is the Lord's Supper, and 
doesn't belong to our sects at all. Jesus Christ spreads the 
table ; " Take, eat," says He, '' this is my body." " Drink, this 
is my blood ; " and Jesus Christ only has the right to give the 
invitation to it. The sects are talking everywhere of whom 
they shall invite to the communion. They invite I They 
have no more to do Avith this invitation than a tramp has, 
with who shall sit at our dinner-tables. The Lord does His 
own inviting; He invites all His children; with a hospitality 
comprehensive as His love. He says to those who receive Him 
as their Saviour, whether they come from a mansion or from 
the highways and hedges, whether they think this or think 
that, "Drink ye all of it." 

As to who are really qualified to accept this invitation, the 
Lord has thrown the responsibility on each individual. " Let 
a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and 
drink of that cup." The question is one between the soul 
and the Saviour; no mortal is the judge ; all that Church offi- 
cers are authorized to do, is to keep away the openly scandal- 
ous. But is there not danger of bad men coming to the table 



192 Divisions Hurt our Fellowship, 

in such a case ? Yes ; and they will come in any case. Judas 
was at the first Lord's Supper with Jesus Himself, and Simon 
Magus came in afterward under the eyes of St. Peter. The 
true Scriptural position is taken by the Rev. Dr. E. S. Dwight, 
of Hadley, who says : 

" I am not, and for half a dozen years or more have not been, in the 
habit of giving any invitation to the Lord's Supper, further than the simple 
announcement in the morning of its celebration in the afternoon. The 
service has been open to all who choose to share in it — each one being 
judge of his own fitness — and I have never known a single instance in 
which the liberty thus conceded has been abused by the intrusion of a no- 
toriously unworthy person. If it had been, it would not have troubled me." 

As to our human tests of this and that doctrinal opinion, 
or this and that sectarian form, they are effrontery from be- 
ginning to end. We have no more right to say that a man 
shall not come to the Lord's table unless he agrees with our 
theological peculiarities, than to say he shall not come unless 
he has red hair, or weighs just one hundred and fifty pounds. 
Says Stillingfleet : 

" The main inlet of all the distractions, confusions, and divisions of the 
Christian world hath been by adding other conditions of Church com- 
munion than Christ hath done." 

Yes, man's dictation as to the Lord's guests is the ecclesias- 
tical crime of the age. It is this which tears us apart and de- 
moralizes the Church. We may talk of union to our dying 
day, but we shall effect nothing till we turn right around ; 
keep our opinions to ourselves, and leave the Lord to choose 
His own company. 

In the heat and pride of contention, we may not see this ; 
but we shall see it at the last. Many years ago a steamer cross- 
ing the Atlantic was struck by a tempest. Several clergymen 
were on board, and feeling that their closing hour had come, 
they held a communion ; Christians of all sects ate and drank 
together ; not a word was said about apostolic succession or 
immersion. And lo ! several passengers who belonged to no 
sect whatever came forward to join with them. Might they 
do so? In that awful moment, with the voice of the Lord 
pealing in the clouds around them and eternity opening its 
portals before them, not a Christian there dared say a word 



Divisions Hurt our Fellowship. 193 

against these trembling vagrants. The door was left in the 
Lord's hand ; He opened it ; and they all united in the pre- 
cious feast. And in the day when the earth shall reel for her 
final overthrow, then, if not before, we also will be ready to 
keep still when God speaks, and acknowledge as brothers 
even the imperfect and ignorant whom He has chosen. 

13 



CHAPTER IX. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR LOVE. 

Head of Thy Church beneath, 

The cathoHc, the true, 
On all her members breathe, 

Her broken frame renew. 
Then shall Thy perfect will be done 
When Christians love and live as one. 

LOVE — THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Gravitation, converging all atoms toward the supreme 
center, draws them to each other. Love, binding all true 
hearts to God's heart, also inclines them to one another. 
Every man who loves God is attracted to every other man 
who loves Him. At the Fall, when we fell away from God, 
we fell away from each other. Jesus came to renew these 
sundered cords of love. And so an eminent writer has said: 

"Jesus Christ was an incarnation of love. He was love, living, breath- 
ing, and speaking among men. His birth was the nativity of love ; His 
sermons the word of love ; His miracles the wonders of love ; His tears the 
melting of love ; His crucifixion the agonies of love ; His death the sacri- 
fice of love ; and His resurrection the triumph of love." 

Moved by this Spirit of Christ, good Bishop Mcllvaine once 
exclaimed : " Wherever the Lord has a disciple, there I have 
a brother ! " The feeling was once shown in the early settle- 
ment of Cincinnati. A colony arrived on a flat-boat, and were 
as usual warmly greeted by their friends already on the ground. 
The crowd began to disperse when one stranger, who had 
received no welcome, leaned on the rail, and said : " Friends, 
if any of you love the Lord Jesus Christ, I am your brother ! " 
A score of Christians reached out their hands to him and 
loved him at once, because of their common Saviour. Thus 
the spirit of Christianity is mutual love. Every member of 
Christ's Body feels joined to every other member of it. 
(194) 



Divisions Hurt our Love, 195 

LOVE — THE SIGN OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Christ never said that His people were to have any peculiar 
dress, or dialect, or creed, or catechism, or Hturgy, or mode of 
worship ; they were to be recognized by their love — their love 
to Him and to each other. 

By this mark we know ourselves to he Christians. " We know 
that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the 
"brethren." 

By this mark the world knows us to be Christians. " By this 
shall all men know that ye are my disciples, because ye have 
love one for another." 

Accordingly, St. Augustine says: 

" Love alone constitutes the distinction between the sons of God and the 
sons of the devil. Let all ever so devoutly sign themselves with the sign of 
the cross ; let all duly answer, Amen; let all sing Hallelujah ; let all be ever 
so regnlarly baptized ; let all be constant in their attendance upon public 
worship ; let all unsparingly disburse their substance in building the walls 
of cathedrals ; still the sons of God are not distinguished from the sons of 
the devil, except by charity, or ' love.' They who have this have been born 
of God, and they who have it not, have not been born of God." 

This was the mark of the Early Church. The first Christian 
societies were bands of brothers and sisters. '' See," exclaim- 
ed a heathen, " how they love one another." Another heathen 
said in astonishment, " These Christians love each other before 
they know each other ! " And still another heathen writer 
remarked with a sneer, "Their lawgiver has persuaded, them 
that they are all brethren ! " 

Dionysius, of Alexandria, thus contrasts the conduct of the 
Christians and heathen during a pestilence in that city: 

" The brethren in the fullness of their brotherly love spared not them- 
selves. Their only anxiety was a mutual one for each other ; they waited 
on the sick without thinking of themselves, readily ministering to their wants, 
and for Christ's sake cheerfully giving up their lives ; for many died after 
others by their care had been recovered from the sickness. With the hea- 
thens it was quite otherwise. Those who showed the first symptoms of the 
disease, they drove from them. They fled from their dearest friends, and 
left the dead unburied, making it their chief care to secure themselves from 
the contagion." 

LOVE HAS BEEN HURT. 

It ought to grow brighter continually in the Church which 
is its earthly home. Our principal duty is to take care of it. 



196 Divisions Hurt our Love, 

In ancient Rome there was a temple dedicated to the heathen 
goddess Vesta. At its altar, virgins ministered as female 
priests, and their duty was to keep the sacred flame ever burn- 
ing. If it went out through their neglect, they were severely 
punished. How carefully they watched it day and night ! So 
should we keep our brotherly affection always pure and 
shining. 

But a sad change has come. Says the Rev. Dr. Schmucker: 

" Paul informs us : ' That there be no schism in the body ; but that the 
members should have the same care one for another ; and if one member 
suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or if one member be honored, all the 
members rejoice with it.' But, is not directly the reverse of this too fre- 
quently witnessed ? Does not the great mass of the several religious de- 
nominations of our land, exhibit anything else than ' the same care ' for the 
other members of Christ's body? If one denomination suffers, fails of suc- 
cess, or meets with disgrace in some unworthy members, do not some sur- 
rounding denominations rather at least tacitly and cheerfully acquiesce, if 
not rejoice, hoping that thus more room will be made and facility offered for 
their own enlargement ? We do not find that members of the same family 
thus cordially acquiesce or triumph in each other's misfortune or disgrace. 
If one brother is visited by any calamity, if he falls a victim to intemperance 
and bears about his bloated face the ensign of his disgrace, do we find his 
brothers and sisters rejoice in it ? Do they not rather sympathize, feel hurt 
themselves, and mourn over his downfall ? Thus ought it to be among all 
who deserve the name of Christ. Thus would it be, if the community of 
interest in the Saviour's family had not been impaired by sectarian divisions 
which place several distinct religious families on the same ground, with sep- 
arate pecuniary interests, with conflicting prejudices, with rival sectarian 
aims ! . In the apostolic age and for centuries after it, only one Christian 
Church occupied the same field, and thus three-fourths of the causes which 
originate contention among modern Christians were avoided. These sep- 
arate interests will always create contention, rivalry, and jealousies." 

The Rev. Ira C. Billman, of Ohio, speaks of it in these 
words : 

" Notwithstanding the prominence of the badge Christ designed His dis- 
ciples to wear; notwithstanding it was so clearly set forth and insisted 
upon by the apostles and first disciples ; notwithstanding it was so highly 
esteemed and emphasized by the early Church ; we have the sad fact to chroni- 
cle, that the church of to-day has erased this mark from its forehead. 

" It is as if ' the bride, the lamb's wife,' had repudiated the sacred name, 
the only name by which the bridegroom had affianced her, and sought in a 
bill of divorcement its utter displacement by other and unsanctified appella- 
tions. Perhaps of all the commands of Jesus, the observance of the new 
commandment, that on which He so insisted — so set His heart — is least ap- 
parent to a surrounding world. In fact it does not appear at all. Its un- 



Divisions Hurt our Love, 197 

certain and flickering light does not rise high or shine bright, as the frater- 
nal love of the worldl}^ classes or secret societies which it has often de- 
nounced, and whose lights in envy it has attempted to put out. A cold denomi- 
national civility, a killing sectarian rivalry, precludes the genial spring-tide 
warmth and vernal bloom of anything like a broad universal Christ-like 
love. There may be here and there exceptions to an assertion so sweeping. 
And there must be good men and women who see these things sorrowing— 
the few righteous more than the precious ten required to save this corrupt 
modern Sodom of denominationalism from a rain of fire and brimstone. 

" By the loss of this badge the Christian Church as a body stands con- 
detnned before the world. 

" Caste or class love — denominational love — on which we build our hope 
of recognition before the world, is as old as the hills. There is nothing dis- 
tinguishing in it. The world even will love its own. If ye salute your 
brethren of the same sect only, what do ye more than others.-^ 'Do not 
even the publicans the same ? ' 

" Denominational love is not Christian love, and so far from being any 
evidence of our discipleship, to Christ, ourselves or the world, it is proof 
against it." 

This is a painful record. We should rest neither day nor 
night till the dying flame is revived. In homely, but signifi- 
cant words the crying need of the Church was thus expressed 
by a slave in a negro prayer-meeting : " O Lord, we pray 
Thee, snuff the candle of love in our hearts ! " 

To know what to do let us first see how the wrong has been 
brought about. 

DENOMINATIONS SEPARATE US. 

Those who love, seek to be together. Christ's prayer was : 
'' Father, I will that they whom Thou hast given me be with 
me where I am." And the early Christians, whether in the 
temple, in the upper room, or breaking bread from house to 
house, were ever with each other. So close together did they 
keep that they held even their property in common. 

It is all different now. The usual idea is that only those 
Christians should unite who have been carefully sorted out, 
and that the sorts should keep apart. The venerable Dr. 
Hewit, a Presbyterian clergyman, once visited a Methodist 
Conference sitting in Bridgeport. Being invited to speak, he 
made an eloquent address on Christian union ; whereupon one 
of the Methodists good-humoredly hinted at the doctor's 
never exchanging pulpits with other denominations. Rising 
at once, the doctor replied : 



19^ Divisions Hurt our Love, 

" A certain minister, one Sabbath, was enforcing the duty of love to oui 
neighbors, and enumerating the things essential to its maintenance. Aftei 
proceeding in his discourse through sixthly and seventhly and lastly, his 
good deacon, who had listened with marked interest, sprang to his feet and 
exclaimed, 'Have you really done, sir ? ' ' Yes,' replied the preacher. *I 
am astonished that you should omit one thing which I have found indispen - 
sable in keeping peace among my neighbors.' ' And pray, what may that 
be?' asked the preacher. 'Why,' rejoined the dtdiCon, ' a good line fence 
between them, ten rails high I' " 

That is the way it is looked at now. A man ttying to 
manufacture silk from cobwebs once collected four thousand 
spiders, but the insects fought so with each other that the ex- 
periment had to be abandoned. In the same way, Christians 
are considered such a belligerent set that you must rail them 
apart to keep them at peace. 

It was not Christ's idea. He did not call His people spiders, 
He called them sheep ; because sheep have a strong attach- 
ment for each other. Sheep never bite like dogs, or kick like 
horses, or hook like cattle. They crowd into the same fold. 
Spiders crawl alone, eagles fly alone, sheep flock together. In 
a hundred places in Scripture the Church is spoken of as a 
flock of sheep. It was Christ's favorite comparison. '' There 
shall be one Flock and one Shepherd." It was the wolf, He 
said, which scattereth the sheep. 

We side with Christ in this disagreement. We believe 
Dr. Hewit does too, now ; for he has been in heaven these 
many years. We believe Christians should be brought to- 
gether, not kept apart. We believe a great cause of our ill- 
feeling to one another is the high fences the sects have built 
between us. 

SEPARATION BEGETS BIGOTRY. 
A Presbyterian paper in Chicago says : 

" We believe in teaching the doctrines of our Church, in feeding our peo- 
ple with our denominational literature, and in being loyal to the Church to 
which we belong." 

By '^ the Church " it means not the Body of Christ, or the 
Church of Chicago, according to Scripture, but the Pres- 
byterian party ; and this party, it says, should be fed with 
denominational food, and receive the denominational loyalty. 

Christians have generally followed this kind of advice. We 



Divisions Hurt our Love, 199 

have cantoned ourselves off into separate corners of the relig- 
ious world, and there we look at one set of books, hear one 
set of opinions, talk with one set of men, and grow more and 
more devoted to " our Church." Through this denomina- 
tional loyalty and feeding, we have lost the breadth and 
grandeur of Christian love, and come to bound every thought 
and enterprise by sectarian lines. The good ladies of a relig- 
ious society in Dayton, Ohio, have published a '' Presbyterian' 
Cook Book." And the Rev. George P. Darden, writing from 
another State, says : ^' We are intensely denominational here. 
The prayers are like the old man's blessing at the table — 
' Lord, bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us 
four and no more ! ' " 

As water fouls when you stop its flow, so this confined love 
always spoils. No sooner are we shut within the walls of a 
sect than we begin to feel sour to those outside. We doubt 
their orthodoxy. The less we see of them the stronger our 
prejudice. A bright little girl reared among the Seventh-day 
Baptists, went to visit some relatives who were Episcopalians. 
It was her first journey from home. " Uncle William is a very 
bad man," she said to her little cousin. '* What does he do 
that is bad?" was the indignant query. The little Sabbata- 
rian was ready with a crushing indictment : " He smokes and 
he keeps Sunday ! " 

Were we thrown with those who differ from us, exposed to 
the action and counteraction of our opposites, it would show 
us the excellencies in others and the defects in ourselves. 
Our heart would be " enlarged," as the Psalmist says. Our 
little souls would swell as we saw how great our Father's 
house was. We would learn that showers of blessing fell 
upon other fields than ours, that the fruitful vine ran over the 
wall and dropped its clusters beyond our fence. The Rev. 
James Hamilton has beautifully said : 

" When the tide is out you may have noticed, as you rambled among the 
rocks, Httle pools with little fishes in them. To the shrimp in such a pool 
its foot-depth of water is all the ocean for the time being. He has no deal- 
ings with his neighbor shrimp in the adjacent pool, though it may be only a 
few inches of sand that divide them. But when the rising ocean begins to lip 
over the margin of his lurking-place, one pool joins another, their various ten- 
ants meet, and, by and by, in place of their little patch of standing water, they 
have the ocean's boundless fields to roam in. When the tide is out, when 
religion is low, the faithful are to be found, insulated, here a few and there a 



200 Divisions Hurt our Love. 

few, in the little standing pools that stud the beach, having no dealings with 
their neighbors of the adjoining pools, calling them Samaritans, and fancy- 
ing that their own little communion includes all that are precious in the 
sight of God. They forget for a time that there is a vast and expansive 
ocean rising — every ripple, every reflux brings it nearer — a mightier com- 
munion, even a communion of saints, which is to engulf all minor considera- 
tions, and enable the fishes of all pools, the Christians, the Christ-lovers, 
of all denominations, to come together." 

Gentle Charles Lamb once remarked of a person whom he 
disliked : *' But I know very little of him ; probably if I knew 
him better, I would begin to love him." So with us all. 
When Gen. Zachary Taylor was nominated for the Presidency, 
he said he was a Whig, but not an ultra Whig. Being asked 
what he meant, he replied : 

" Since I joined the army I have been in three wars. In the campaign 
of 1 812 I saw both parties represented on the battle-field. In the Seminole 
war I saw Whig and Democrat lie down together in the swamps of Flor- 
ida ; and in Mexico I saw them both at the cannon's mouth at Monterey, 
and on the bloody field of Buena Vista ; and at last I saw the Whig and 
Democrat with broken health drag themselves home to die, and that is 
why I cannot find it in my heart to proscribe men for political differences. " 

Just so would the ultraism and bitterness in the Church 
clear away if these lines were down, and, close up to the 
brethren whom we condemn, we could see them struggling as 
we do with a corrupt heart, and fighting and groaning and 
praying at our side in conflict with sin. 

We once were acquainted with a Baptist and Methodist 
congregation in the same place, which were quite hostile, and 
felt themselves wide apart as the poles. Their ministers know- 
ing better, arranged a little plan. One pleasant evening the 
Methodist prayer-meeting, thirty couples, arm-in-arm, left 
their room and followed their pastor over to the Baptist 
prayer-meeting. Warmly received, they sung and shouted 
*'Amen" together, and declared they had never been so 
happy in all their lives. They saw eye to eye ; this let their 
love out, and they never have quarreled since. The rule is 
invariable, we may depend upon it. Christians are like live 
coals, the closer they are massed together the brighter they 
keep. 

It is astonishing how little the Christians in the different 
denominations know of each other. They keep so strictly in 



Divisions Hurt our Love. 201 

their party walls, that though they meet on the street every 
day they seldom get religiously acquainted. A Presbyterian 
and Methodist pastor had urged the same precious Gospel for 
many years in a quiet village, when one Sunday they exchanged 
pulpits. It was noticed that on coming out the remark 
was heard from both sides : " Why, he preaches just like a 
Methodist I " '' Why, he preaches just like a Presbyterian ! " 
Keeping their little lumps of dough in different pans, they 
really were surprised to find it was the very same leaven 
working in both. 

In one of the fierce wars of France with Britain, it so hap- 
pened that a company of Welsh soldiers were opposed to a 
company of the French from the province of Bretagne, which 
had been originally peopled by a colony from Wales. They 
were just ready to draw their weapons when, uttering the war- 
cry, they discovered that they spoke the same language ! 
Instantly they threw down their guns, and rushed into each 
other's arms as brothers. And if Christians, now alienated 
by sect, could only get near enough to hear each other talk, 
they would find that they, too, all speak the same language, 
the sweet language of Canaan, and away, too, would go their 
weapons of war. 

When a movement affecting our common humanity takes 
place, and Christians are forced out of their pens, how quickly 
they join in love, and how hard for them to get back into the 
pens again. Perhaps there is no place in the country where 
the different sects used to keep more strictly to themselves 
than in the little city of Xenia in Ohio. But a Temperance 
agitation a while ago, mixed them together. In the effort to 
save their husbands and sons from the accursed bowl, the 
ladies became known to one another. Then the United Pres- 
byterians began to sing hymns with the Methodist sisters, and 
Episcopalians to kneel in prayer with the Baptists, and a love 
sprung up which it will take the party walls a whole gener- 
ation to wilt down again. 

Many instances of this occurred in our civil war. Love 
flowed and bigotry disappeared uncommonly fast as the Chris- 
tian soldiers from all sections and sects became acquainted 
around their camp fires. The Rev. B. C. Hammond was chap- 
lain of a regiment near Petersburg. The Christians in it formed 
a Regimental Church. Though made up of members from 



202 Divisions Hurt our Love. 

all the denominations, it was a very united and happy church. 
They needed no ten-rail fence between them. "Wewalked 
lovingly together," says Mr. Hammond; ''earnest and real was 
our religious communion, and there was a blessed revival 
among the other soldiers ! " 

Why is there good feeling among so many Christians of the 
present day? It is because through Evangelical Alliances 
and Young Men's Christian Associations and Union Commun- 
ions, they have come to know each other better. Says the 
Rev. Edward Eggleston : 

" For many years I have found it impossible to fence myself in. I had 
the misfortune to labor for years in union work, and it has spoiled me. This 
thing of co-operative work is fearfully destructive to denominational feeling. 
If you want to preserve the flav^or of sectarianism in a man, you must keep 
him corked up and hermetically sealed, so that no fresh air will reach him. 
Never let a man browse in the forbidden fields of the communion of the 
saints, if you don't want him to grow too big for the sectarian barn-yard." 

BIGOTRY BEGETS STRIFE. 

Separated — soured — the next inevitable thing is, a struggle. 
What else could you expect ? The sects, each with its officers, 
buglemen, and loyal following, are crowded into places where 
there is not room, and then told to maintain their ground. 
What better contrivance for war could you invent than that ? 

The first principle of the sect is antagonism. It is meant 
to operate against other sects. On the platform we hear of 
the love between our divisions ; beautiful comparisons are 
drawn between the different colors of the one rainbow, the dif- 
ferent fingers of the one hand, and the different branches of 
the one Church. Mere Fiction. Hearts do reach out to each 
other in love ; sects, never. Being rival organizations, they 
are in their very nature belligerent. They are uniformed 
armies equipped for assault and repulse. A sect, like a frig- 
ate, has no reason or apology for existence, except to attack 
the opinions of others and defend its own. Go below the 
deck ; you find yourself among arguments and controversies ; 
cannon and cannon-balls on every side ; the only outlook the 
port-holes whence the enemy may be raked. One of our 
leading denominational papers in New York recently advo- 
cated union meetings as affording better chance for a broad- 
side. It said : . 



Divisions Hurt oitr Love. ' 203 

" Interdenominational comity furnishes the grappling-irons by which we 
fasten our vessel alongside the enemy's craft, and boarding his decks we 
can strike down the errors against which we fight. Friendly contact with 
people of other denominations is the very thing we need in order to spread 
our doctrines among them." 

What has love to do with such a construction as that ? In 
a region of love it would be as out of place as a man-of-war 
in heaven. It could not live ; it would melt away as an ice- 
berg does in the warm waters of the Gulf stream. 

Thus it is that while Christian hearts are watching to mani- 
fest their love, Christian sects are watching to give a thrust. 
Everywhere we see disciples striving for union, and denomi- 
nations employing newspapers, conventions, and ecclesiastical 
laws to prevent union and keep us apart. 

The very moment that sect takes the new Christian in hand, 
he begins to show the wolf. The Rev. J. W. Brier, Sr., a 
Presbyterian minister of California, cites an instance which 
came under his own observation : 

" In a small California city, of six or eight hundred inhabitants, were 
three sects — Presbyterian, Northern and Southern Methodists. The Pres- 
byterian minister V'/as a young man of talent and great zeal. He induced the 
two Methodist pastors to unite with him in a series of revival meetings. 
The result of their joint efforts was the, conversion of about forty persons. 
These converts for a time seemed to have all things in common, and ate 
their bread from house to house with joy. They knew but one fold and 
one shepherd. They were already members of the Church by spiritual 
regeneration ; but a day, a fatal day, arrived when these lambs of the (lock 
were to be separated, marked, branded, and corralled. All who had taken 
part in the meetings were invited to assemble at the Presbyterian chapel. 
When thus assembled, three seats were arranged in the following order : 
In front was the Presbyterian seat, on the right was the North Methodist, 
and on the left the South Methodist. A hymn was sung, and during the 
singing all the converts were urged to occupy one or the other of these 
seats as an indication of their choice between these three sects. About 
two-thirds of the whole number took the Presbyterian seat ; not because 
they knew or cared anything about the doctrines or government of the 
Presbyterian denomination, but simply because they preferred the popular 
j'oung minister, who had been chiefly instrumental in their conversion. 
Well, the pastors of the Methodist churches and their adherents at once 
accused the Presbyterian minister and his adherents of proselyting ' on the 
sly ; ' this gave rise to a feud, and, although fourteen years have passed 
away, no revival has ever, since that day, blessed that city. This is only 
one case out of thousands that are constantly transpiring throughout the 
entire Christian world." 



204 Divisions Hurt otir Love. 

In this day, when converted hearts are agonizing for union, 
let us see what the sects, through their organs and officials, 
are doing to hinder it. 

Looking to the Baptists, we find the Western Recorder, 
a Baptist paper of Kentucky, laying down the following 
axioms : 

" I. Baptist churches are the only Gospel churches. 

" 2. All Christians, unless it is wholly impracticable, should hold mem- 
bership in some Baptist church. 

" 3. The demands of the Scripture would be met if all other denomina- 
tions — seeing their errors — would disorganize. 

" 4. It is the duty of every Baptist to do all he can, legitimately to influ- 
ence Christians and other denominations to leave their unscriptural organi- 
zations and unite with the Baptists. 

"5. It is wrong in a Baptist to make the impression — by word or deed 
— that other denominations are Gospel churches." 

The Memphis Baptist reports the additions to Its ministry 
in these words : 

" Forty-two ministers of the various sects have, during the year, renounced 
the societies and traditions of men, to follow Christ ! " 

A Baptist Association held not long since at Brownsville, 
Oregon, published a manifesto of their belief. Here it is : 

" We believe there is but one true Church of Christ — to wit : the Baptist 
Church ; and that all His ordinances and their administrations were com- 
mitted to that Church and to no other ; and that this trust has never been 
changed nor abrogated ; and hence, that all the administrations of the 
ordinances of Christ by other organizations claiming to be His churches 
are invalid and void, and will not be recognized by us as true, nor their 
officers considered as officers of a Gospel Church." 

In accordance with this, when the Rev. Emory J. Haynes, 
a well-known Methodist minister of Brooklyn, not long ago 
joined the Baptists, the leaders re-ordained him, although 
he had been ordained by the Methodists and had preached 
the Gospel In the Hanson Place sanctuary for years. Coming 
to the Baptists from the Methodists, he was treated as If 
he had come from heathendom. The Examiner and CJironicle 
of New York, the leading Baptist paper of the East, and the 
Journal and Messenger of Cincinnati, the leading Baptist paper 
of the West, defended this action, asserting that ministers com- 
ing to them from other sects ought always to be re-ordained. 



Divisions Hurt our Love, 205 

To these vollies the other sects of course make sharp reply. 
In the leading Methodist paper of Boston, Zions Herald, we 
find a communication from a Methodist bishop describing how 
the Methodists got possession of a Baptist meeting-house in 
Charleston, South Carolina. These are his words : 

" Through the remarkable zeal and sagacity and persistence of Dr. Web- 
ster and the Rev. T. Willard Lewis, we secured three admirable properties 
in Charleston. The first of these is a fine structure, unequaled by us in all 
the South, the most of the North— a Greek temple, pillars in front, large 
chapel attached, handsome iron fence before, paneled roof, organ and all, 
worth sixty thousand dollars, and costing twenty thousand. The Baptists 
owned it, and offered it to us. They tried to get out of their bargain, but 
were threatened with damages. They feared, and agreed to deliver it ; but 
it must be within one week, and only on payment of the gold coin. No 
missionary drafts would answer. Father Claflin and Bishop Baker were 
going North, and the banker was in New York. He got the money there 
the veiy day the contract would expire. The representative of the banker, 
sympathizing with the Baptists, refused to receive the missionary drafts for the 
gold, despite telegrams and other orders sufficiently clear. As the last re- 
sort, he was asked if he would take the drafts endorsed by a Mr. Williams, 
a leading banker of Charleston. He did not dare refuse. The gentleman 
was hunted up, and consented ; was brought in, signed his name, and the 
box, with twenty thousand dollars in gold, was carried on a colored broth- 
er's shoulders (how happy a Samson was he then), placed on the unwill- 
ing desk of the representative of the trustees just as the time was expiring, 
and the transfer was made. Didn't the.happy band shout and cry for joy.? 
They had prayed, and fasted, and wept ; now they rejoiced, and feasted, and 
wept." 

How much love exists between the sects, when one gets 
from another for $20,000 what is worth $60,000, and then 
forces the bargain when the losers wish to recede ! 

Turn to the Lutherans. No more loving or lovable Chris- 
tians can be found than many who are called by this name 
but see the kind of '' denominational literature " supplied by 
their leaders. 

The Lutheran and Missionary says : 

" There are no evangelical denominations ; there is one evangelical 
Church, invisibly — all true believers ; visibly, and in confession — the Evan- 
gelical Lutheran Church." 

In another Lutheran paper we find a sermon six columns 
long, supporting the assertion that no Lutheran can join an 
outside sect without hazarding the salvation of his soul. 



2o6 Divisio7is Hurt our Love, 

One of the most eminent Lutheran divines of the country- 
argues that Lutherans should not exchange pulpits with other 
denominations, because Jesus and His apostles did not ex- 
change with pagans ! And the General Council of the Evan- 
gelical Lutheran Church of North America, which met not 
long ago at Galesburg, Illinois, adopted a paper on the same 
subject, which concludes with these words : 

" The rule which accords with the Word of God and the Confession of 
the Church is, Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran ministers only ; Lutheran al- 
tars for Lutheran communicants only." 

As to the Episcopalians^ we find thousands of warm-hearted 
and broad-minded Christians among them, yet everything 
done officially, by the sect, is exclusive to the last degree. 
Clergymen from other Protestant bodies are always re-ordained, 
and when one of their clergymen joins another sect, even 
though it be the Reforined Episcopal, they depose him, and 
publish that he has renounced the ministry ! 

Laws always represent the ruling powers ; they would be 
changed at once if they did not. Now the Episcopal laws 
'utterly ignore the other sects. Individual Episcopalians cherish 
their brethren of different names, but it recently came out 
that, according to the code, other ministers were not only not 
recognized as ordained, but could not even be called '^ Rever- 
end ! " In May, 1874, the Rev. Henry Keet, a Methodist 
clergyman at Owston Ferry, in England, desired to erect a 
tombstone in the village church-yard there, with this in- 
scription : 

"I.H. S. In loving memory of Annie Augusta Keet, the youngest 
daughter of the Rev. H. Keet, Wesleyan minister, who died in. Owston 
Ferry, May 11, 1874. Aged seven years and nine months. 
"Safe sheltered from the storms of life." 

The Episcopal rector, however, objected to having a stone in 
the parish burying-ground which referred to a dissenting min- 
ister as '' Rev." Mr. Keet appealed to the Bishop. The 
Bishop informed him that the title of '' Reverend " could only 
be given to ministers who had been episcopally ordained. Mr. 
Keet then appealed to the Ecclesiastical Court, but was noti- 
fied by the Chancellor of the diocese that he could not legally 
be described as a "minister," much less a "Reverend." It 
was not until he took the matter out of the Church entirely 



Divisions Hurt our Love. 207 

and went to the civil tribunal, that Mr. Keet gained the right 
to put up his tombstone. This wretched controversy excited 
bitterness among the Episcopalians and Methodists on both 
sides of the Atlantic, and was started just in time to neutralize 
the good feelings aroused by the Evangelical Alliance. Who 
can say now that the Devil is dead ? It was in very weariness 
of spirit over such quarrels as this that Dr. Alexander once 
cried out, " Oh, for a cycle of peace ; oh, for a breathing-spell 
from these unnatural contentions ! " 

That peace will never come so long as we are divided into 
denominations. While they exist their members will be loyal, 
and their leaders will engage in hostilities. The trouble is not 
with any particular sects, it is with the whole divisional sys- 
tem. All sectarian names, organizations, and efforts are dis- 
turbing elements in our common Christianity. Love cannot 
have free course and prevail until they are exterminated 
utterly and forever. 

DRIFTING FARTHER APART. 

As we hear of these contentions, we sometimes take comfort 
in the thought that they are temporary, that notwithstanding 
an occasional outbreak the sects are gradually coming togeth- 
er. We mistake. The alienation increases. Our denomina- 
tions foster a growing unlikeness in opinion and worship and 
feeling, and they are all the while drifting farther and farther 
apart. There are fewer collisions now than there used to be, 
but it is because we are so wide asunder. The Churchmen 
and Puritans do not struggle at the present day in England 
as they did two centuries ago, for now they have nothing 
whatever to do with each other. Individual courtesies now 
are more frequent than they used to be, but ripples blow one 
way while the current is going another. Soldiers off duty 
will many times do little acts of kindness while their generals 
are preparing for more desperate battle. . A thousand facts 
show that the esprit du sect was never more ardent, the par- 
tisan leaders never more active and determined than to-day. 

Look at our Missionary work. The Panoplist, a missionary 
paper published in February, 18 12, in giving an account of 
the ordination of the first missionaries from this country, says : 

" Christians of different denominations, who love our Lord Jesus Christ 



2o8 Divisions Hurt our Love, 

in sincerity, experience the blessedness of uniting in this great catholic labor 
of love." 

In the early part of this century the Congregationalists, 
Presbyterians, and Dutch Reformed united cordially in the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions ; 
to-day they work separately. None of the sects work to- 
gether now on the Foreign field. 

Look at our Home Missions. The first organization of 
Home missionaries, the New York Missionary Society, founded 
in 1797, was entirely unsectarian. Some years after, this was 
merged in the American Home Missionary Society. The 
idea of this institution may be gained from these words of 
one of it5 founders : 

" We want a system which shall be one — one in purpose, one in action — 
a system which shall gather the resources of philanthropy, patriotism, and 
Christian sympathy throughout our country into one vast reservoir, from 
which a stream shall flow to Georgia, to Louisiana, to Missouri, and to 
Maine. We want a society in which all who have the spirit of the Gospel, 
all who love their country, all whose bosoms ever glowed with philanthropy 
may unite without one hesitating or discordant feeling. We want a 
National Society. Let no sect raise its banner, no section stand alone, no 
party wake to strife." 

In accordance with these sentiments, one hundred and 
twenty-six ministers and laymen, from all parts of the coun- 
try, and from the Presbyterian, Congregational, Dutch Re- 
formed, Associate Reformed, and other sects, met in the 
Brick Presbyterian Church in New York, May 10, 1826, and 
organized the American Home Missionary Society. Leading 
Dutch Reformed as Thomas De Witt, and leading Presbyte- 
rians as Gardiner Spring and Archibald Alexander and Sam- 
uel Miller, were interested in it. But see now. Through 
sectarian pressure the denominations have withdrawn from 
that union society, until it is supported by but one — the Con- 
gregational. Each sect has now its own Missionary Society, 
and is busy in establishing its own outposts and starveling 
congregations. Does this not show that the sects are parting 
company and pushing love to the wall ? 

But consider the denominations themselves. We notice 
that the older a sect grows, the more hide-bound it becomes. 
The Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, the Episcopalians, ex- 
clusive according to their age. We notice that as a sect goes 



Divisions Hurt our Love. 209 

on the strong partisans always gain the control. The Jesuits 
rule the Papal sect, the High-Churchmen the Episcopalian, 
the Close-Communion the Baptist. 

That eminent Baptist, President Robinson of Brown Uni- 
versity, says : 

" The principle with which our fathers set out was the sacredness of in- 
dividual rights — the responsibility of every man to his own Master. They 
suppressed only out-breaking wickedness and false doctrine. During the 
last dozen years there has been a tendency toward ecclesiasticism all over 
the Christian world. Even Baptists are beginning to have faith in the 
power of ecclesiastical authority." 

At the start, the Methodists were a union people. John 
Wesley plead for the oneness of all believers. Long ago 
John Summerfield spoke of the names and sects and parties in 
the Church as the handiwork of Satan. Now, Bishop Havens 
defends them as blessed and providential ; and on our whole 
frontier Methodists are planting their Sunday-schools in sharp 
competition with those of the American Sunday-school Union. 

The history of the Congregationalists is thus summed up 
by a venerable Congregational clergyman of Connecticut : 

" Forty years ago it was the glory of Congregationalism that it was 
Christian, not of Paul or Apollos or Cephas — but of Christ. Then the 
name Congregational was rarely spoken, even by ministers ; the churches 
and their members were often called Presbyterian, and many good, honest, 
Christ-loving souls knew themselves by no other name. Then they only 
needed to know that any scheme, society, or work proposed, as its object, 
the glory of Christ and the good of man ; this was enough to secure their 
interest and co-operation. They were willing to work with any who loved 
Christ and souls. ' They were of one language and of one speech.' And 
under this banner of The Cross they conquered. But a change came : 
" And they said : Go to, let us build up a city, and a tower, whose top may 
reach unto heaven ; and let us make us a name ; lest we be scattered 
abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" 

Look at the Episcopalians. No stronger union man ever 
lived than Thomas Cranmer. It never entered his head to 
doubt the validity of Lutheran or Presbyterian ordination. 
He invited non-episcopal divines to help make the Prayer- 
book. He appointed non-episcopal divines as teachers of di- 
vinity at Oxford and Cambridge. For a hundred years, Pres- 
byterian ministers were appointed pastors of Episcopal parishes 
in England without re-ordination. 
14 



2IO Divisions Hurt our Love, 

Come down three centuries and see how the sect spirit has 
grown. In 185 1, Dr. Merle D'Aubigne, the great Protestant 
divine of the Continent and Historian of the Reformation, 
visited England. What took place is shown by the following 
letter which he wrote to a friend : 

"During my stay in London in 185 1, at the time of the Great Exhibition, 
some of my friends belonging- to the Anglican church, wishing to give their 
brethren belonging to the Protestant churches on the Continent, a mark of 
brotherly recognition, offered me the use of one of their pulpits on Whit- 
Sunday. A minister of that church, who is a canon of St. Paul's, read the 
Anglican prayers in French, and I preached in French to a numerous con- 
gregation. Such a proceeding had not taken place in England since thfe 
Reformation. The result was a sharp controversy, which lasted six months 
or a year. One of the daily London papers (Morning Chronicle), an organ 
of the Puseyite party, was foremost in the attack. It asserted that the 
Abbe de Ravigan (then in London), being a priest might have preached, 
but that any minister, not having received Episcopal ordination, was only a 
layman, and that I, being a Presbyterian minister, was liable to three 
months imprisonment, for having preached in a pulpit of the Established 
Episcopal Church." 

What would friend Cranmer have said about that ? 

In 1552, Cranmer made the first move for an evangelical 
alliance. He corresponded with John Calvin and Philip Me- 
lancthon for such a union of the Protestant Christians of 
England, Switzerland, and Germany. Afterward, when the 
Dutch Protestants met at the Synod of Dort, Episcopal bish- 
ops and divines were officially present there as delegates from 
the Church of England ; and these Episcopal leaders received 
the communion at the hands of the Presbyterian moderator — 
Bogerman. 

Remembering these facts, let us again come down to our 
own day and see the change. When the Evangelical AlHance 
met at New York, the Episcopalians as a body held aloof. A 
few clergymen in their private capacity took part, and com- 
muned with their brethren in Dr. Adams' Presbyterian sanc- 
tuary. For this. Bishop Cummins was made so uncomfortable 
that he had to resign, and the English visitors encountered a 
storm when they got home. The prevailing sentiment among 
Episcopalians there was expressed in the following public 
letter from the Vicar of St. Paul's, Brighton, to the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury : 



Divisions Hurt ou}"- Love, 211 

" Acting on your private judgment, you gravely compromised the whole 
Church of England by sending the highest ecclesiastic in your diocese, the 
Dean of Canterbury, over to America, to attend, with a letter of sympathy 
and recognition, a lawless gathering of sectaries of every conceivable kind, 
where your representative committed a further breach of church law in not 
only being present at, but in taking an active part in, what I call a parody 
of the Holy Communion, in which, as the newspapers told us, one dissent- 
ing minister 'gave thanks' for the bread, and another 'gave thanks' for 
the wine." 

So exclusive have the majority there become, that a leading 
Episcopal paper in England protested against the burial of 
Dr. Livingstone in the National sepulchre,Westminster Abbey, 
because he was a Presbyterian ! 

The first Rector of Trinity parish, .New York, was (1697) 
inducted into office in the Dutch meeting-house On Garden 
Street, and two Dutch clergymen assisted in the services. 
In 1790, at a funeral service in Trinity, Bishop Provoost read 
prayers, after which the Rev. William Lynn, the Dutch Re- 
formed minister in New York, preached an excellent sermon. 
Were such a thing done now the edifice would be fumigated 
and then consecrated over again. 

These facts, and a multitude of others of like import, show 
that whatever the sentiments of private believers, the sects 
are all the while diverging, and that Christian love has less 
and less chance to prevail among them. 

LOVE— THE FOREMOST DUTY. 

Unable to dispute these facts, sectarians turn square upon 
us, and say : " Well, suppose love is hurt by our divisions ; what 
then ? They are unavoidable. We differ ^ and each must obey 
his conscientious views of Scripture T 

The Baptist says : " Immersion is the only true form of 
joining the Church ; organizations having a different form 
cannot, therefore, be true churches, and I ought not, by com- 
muning with them, to acknowledge them as such." The 
Baptist studies this argument over and over, but can detect 
no flaw in it. So the Episcopalian : " Bishops are a divinely 
appointed order of the ministry ; churches without them are, 
therefore, unscriptural, and it is wrong for me to recognize 
them." The Presbyterian conscientiously believes the Pres- 
byterian to be the Scriptural form of government, so he 



212 Divisions Hurt our Love. 

stands off. The Friends are conscientiously opposed to oaths 
and war, so they stand off, etc., etc. 

It is all a blunder ; so plain a blunder that Christians in the 
more enlightened age to come will wonder how they ever 
made it. A lady sends out a servant with her child, telling 
him to ^' take care of its clothes." They enter a mill ; the 
little one is caught in the machinery ; the servant tears away 
its garments, and the child is saved. Did that servant do 
right ? Certainly he did. Back of the command to care for 
the clothes was implied another, higher command, at any cost 
to care for its life. So here. Instructions are given in Scrip- 
ture as to baptisms, administrations, etc. — the wardrobe of 
religion — but there is something back of them, above them. 

There is a relation between the Bible commands. We are 
told to '' rightly divide the word of truth ; " to study how one 
truth is adjusted to another; to find out not only that a thing 
is true, but how it is connected with other truth, what its 
proper place is in the whole system of truth. And the mo- 
ment we do this we find our sectarian logic to be wrong; 
for, superior to all that is said about the ordinances or para- 
phernalia of Christianity stands an injunction, under all cir- 
cumstances, to preserve that Love which is its life. The 
Master has put Love at the top of our pyramid of duties ; 
all modes and opinions are placed beneath it. It is the 
supreme Christian grace. In our misguided zeal we have 
inverted the divine order, and made it the last and least of 
the three ; but in the eternal words of Inspiration the adjust- 
ment is decreed to be this: ''Faith, Hope, Charity — these 
three ; but the greatest of these is Charity." 

In obedience, then, to the entire Scripture, let the Baptist 
take up the doctrine of Immersion. It appears to him in 
black and white on the holy pages ; we have no wish to hide 
it from him. But let him look around it, and he will see that 
this doctrine is outranked and governed by another : " Thou 
shalt not set at naught thy brother." Nothing ever came 
more emphatically and solemnly from the lips of the Son of 
God than that the command to love was '' the First and Great 
Commandment." To obey about baptism may be an act of 
faith, but to obey about fraternity is an act of love, and the 
highest command must be obeyed first. When the Corinth- 
ians were dividing off about doctrines, the apostle showed 



Divisions Hurt our Love. 213 

them that faith without charity was nothing, that even the 
gift of prophecy and the understanding of all mysteries and all 
knowledge without charity was nothing. The precepts as to 
forms and ordinances were relative, but the precept as to unity 
was absolute. Over every diversity and dissension this rule 
was made peremptory : " There must be 710 schism in the Body'' 
However clear our convictions of any Scripture truth, we 
must stop at that word '' schism," as before the direct fiat of 
Almighty God. Forever, and under all circumstances, except 
in the specified way of discipline, are we forbidden to cut off 
a Christian brother from fellowship. 

Any interpretation, therefore, any ecclesiastical law or insti- 
tution, which separates Christian brethren, or in the least 
degree obstructs the flow of love between them, does violence 
to God's Word, and is wrong in its nature, wrong from the 
start. Instead of its being impossible to obey Scripture and 
unite with other disciples, it is impossible to obey Scripture 
and not unite with them. 

LOVE WILL COME IF WE LET IT COME. 

'■^But still,'' it is urged, ^^How can we love if we do not agree ? 
Can we force our affections ? " 

Let us not misapprehend. Differences hinder uniformity, 
but not unanimity. They prevent oneness of mode, but not 
oneness of heart. John Wesley set this forth very plainly. 
In 1760 he issued a circular to fifty ministers of various 
denominations, proposing that they should acknowledge and 
treat each other as brethren, notwithstanding their differences. 
He said : 

" I do not ask a union in opinions. They might agree or disagree touch- 
ing absolute decrees on the one hand or perfection on the other. These 
may still speak of imputing righteousness, and those of the merits of Christ. 
Not a union with regard to outward order. Some may still remain quite 
regular, some quite irregular, and some partly regular. But these things 
being as they are, as each is persuaded in his own mind, is it not a desir- 
able thing that we should love as brethren } " 

Again he said : 

" I do not mean, * Be of my opinion.' You need not. I do not expect 
or desire it. Neither do I mean, 'I will be of your opinion.' I cannot. It 
does not depend on my choice. I can no more think than I can see or 



214 Divisions Hurt our Love. 

hear as I will. Keep you your opinion ; I mine, and that as steadily as 
ever. You need not endeavor to come over to me, or bring me over to 
you. I do not desire to dispute those points, or to hear or to speak one 
word concerning them. Let all opinions alone on one side and the other* 
Only ' Give me thine hand.' 

" I mean, love me. And that not only as thou lovest all mankind ; not 
only as thou lovest thy enemies or the enemies of God, those that hate thee, 
that ' despitefully use thee and persecute thee ; ' not only as a stranger, as 
one of whom thou knowest neither good nor evil. I am not satisfied with 
this. No ; 'If thine heart be right, as mine with thy heart,' then love me 
with a very tender affection, as a friend that is closer than a brother, as 
a brother in Christ, a fellow-citizen of the New Jerusalem, a fellow-soldier 
engaged in the same warfare, under the Captain of our salvation. Love 
me as a companion in the kingdom and patience of Jesus, and a joint heir 
of His glory." 

Wesley felt that love was a force that could override all the 
inequalities of opinion and taste. 

This love belongs to the nature of the New-Born. The 
regenerate are one. Notwithstanding the multitude of our 
varieties, one Spirit flows in us all. Through this spiritual bond 
that unites us, love pulsates everywhere, just as the blood 
flows through the members of a human body. We may stop 
it, as we may stop the circulation in our arm by a ligature, 
but it will flow if not interfered with. 

We are not called upon to force the stream of affection any 
more than to force the stream of a river. God does that. 
Our duty is only to see that it is not clogged with dams, or 
sluiced off into stagnant ponds. At a revival meeting in 
London, the " amens " becoming rather vociferous, a precise 
brother reminded the audience that in building Solomon's 
temple no noise of a tool was heard. " Oh," responded a fer- 
vent Methodist, '' we are not building a temple, we are blast- 
ing rocks ! " That is our work. God builds His own Church, 
and fills it with love as He did the old sanctuary with the 
shekinah ; all we have to do is to tear down the man-made 
walls which intercept the glory, and keep brother from 
brother. 

There is no need of urging Christians to love. They will 
love if you let them. President Nott, in his wise old age, 
once took a newly-married pair aside, and said : '' I want to 
give you this advice, my children : Dont try to be happy. 
Happiness is a shy nymph, and if you chase her, you will never 
catch her ; but just go quietly on and do your duty, and she 



Divisio7ts Hurt our Love. 215 

will come to you." So with Christian affection. Let us go 
quietly on in our appointed work and do nothing to hinder 
it, and it will be sure to come. 

The Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler sketches this scene at a Union 
meeting in Brooklyn : 

"The Convention closed by joining hands, and singing, * Say, brother, 
will you meet us ? ' I saw one of Dr. Storrs' deacons and a Quaker and a 
Methodist standing with clasped hands, and flanked by a Baptist and a 
Presbyterian clergyman. It reminded me of the time when we college- 
students, standing thus in the chemical lecture hall, the electric current 
leaped from the charged battery through the whole circle in an instant." 

All that the people in the chemical hall or in the union 
meeting had to do, was simply to have 7to breaks in the line. 
The electricity flowed of itself. 

The students of four of the Theological Seminaries of Chi- 
cago, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, and Presbyterian, 
had a reunion awhile ago. They sang and prayed together 
with great delight, and for an evening were a band of broth- 
ers. They were clear of their dividing walls ; their Christian 
love being unobstructed, circled around, of course. 



UNION IN LOVE — EASILY ATTAINED. 

Christian union is generally considered a mysterious and 
complicated subject, one of the knotty problems of life. It is 
a mistake. The difficulty is all the other way. A Scotch 
minister said to his good daughter who was about forming an 
engagement : '' It is a solemn thing, Jenny, to be married." 
"Yes, father," replied Jenny, "but it is a good deal solemner 
not to be married." So with Christians. For them to be 
united is the easy and natural thing. Separation is what 
brings the trouble and disturbance. 

There has been a great deal of confusion about it, certainly. 
But it is our own blunder. We have gone beyond Scripture ; 
we have tried to unite not merely in love, but in ritual and 
government, and men have proved intractable ; they would 
not square with our forms and systems. Let us go back to 
the Bible plan, and union will come of itself. It will need no 
harangues, no conventions, no compacts, no compromises. The 
Divine Lodestone will group us together, and draw us into 



2i6 Divisions Hurt our Love, 

the best kind of an organization, an organization at once free 
and efficient, if we only trust to it. 

Take away all creeds except God's creed — the Holy Bible ; 
take away all sects and lines which cut in between Christian 
and Christian ; let the Divine love have a fair chance, a free 
flow, and in every city and village of this land, believers will 
draw together in their own way, and the Church will form 
itself — happy, harmonious, and complete. 

It reminds us of the first trial of anthracite coal. In the 
year 1817, a gentleman brought several tons of this mineral 
into Philadelphia, and sold them for fuel. The proprietor of 
the Fairmount Iron Works procured some and engaged his 
men all the morning in vain efforts to fire up his furnace with 
it. They blew upon it, and raked it, and fixed it this way, 
and fixed it that way, but all would not do. At last, disgusted 
with the ''stones" that would not burn, they slammed to the 
furnace door and went away to dinner. On their return, lo ! 
the furnace door was red-hot, and the fire within seething and 
roaring like a tempest. They stood before it amazed, and 
when they managed to pry open the door, the white glare of 
the flames was beautiful to behold ; never before had such a 
fire been seen ; and from that moment the secret of treating 
anthracite coal was discovered — it only required to be let 
alone. 

The very same is the secret of our whole subject. We have 
tried to bring about union hy fixing men; by shaping their 
conscientious beliefs; by squaring their edges and corners, 
and forcing down their individuality. What a terrible task it 
has been, and what a failure ! Now, if in any place — no mat- 
ter where — we would take all the believers, of every conceiv- 
able pattern — no matter what — put them together in the 
same church, their "points" untouched, shut the door on 
their differences, and let them alone, the heat that is in every 
converted heart would set them aglow, and they would melt 
into a unity that would astonish us. In that furnace, the 
strangest companions would be seen walking arm-in-arm to- 
gether, and, as it was in the furnace of Babylon, with them 
another, in form like the Son of God. Oh, that we had faith 
to trust in this heavenly fusion ! 

One little spot there is in New York where the sectarian 
walls have been blasted away. It is the hall of the Fulton 



Divisions Hurt our Love. 217 

Street Prayer-meeting. Every day, at twelve o'clock, believ- 
ers of more than twelve strange and crooked sorts assemble 
there ; but each man holds his peculiarity as he pleases ; the 
door is shut on controversy ; they begin to sing the song of 
Moses and the Lamb ; they draw near to the burning Throne ; 
the fire kindles, and before the clock strikes one, the odd ma- 
terials have all become one through the solvent power of 
Love. 



CHAPTER X. 
DIVISIONS HURT OUR VARIETY. 

How manifold Thy works, O Lord, 

In wisdom, power, and goodness wrought ! 

The earth is with Thy riches stored, 
And ocean with Thy wonders fraught. 

VARIETY IN CREATION. 

How manifold, indeed! The sky — no tameness of scene 
there. Each glance reveals its own picture, viewed once, 
never again. Clouds, sunbeams, mists, rainbows — eternally 
shifting. We travel abroad — no two landscapes the same. 
The animal creation is equally diversified. Over the earth 
and in the earth, life is everywhere crawling, creeping, boring, 
burrowing, leaping, running, flying. What we call the solitude 
is populous, and what we speak of as the silent depths are 
alive with creatures strange and weird. The quarries, the 
chalk-cliffs which beat back the waves, the very flints which 
grate beneath our carriage wheels, are but the remains of 
countless skeletons. And yet throughout this vast population 
no two creatures have ever been in all particulars the same. 
No two birds, even of the same species, build their nests ex- 
actly alike ; no two of the animalculae, which find their ocean 
in a drop of water, are organized and framed on a precisely 
identical pattern. 

So with Man. We sometimes read of one's having a Double^ 
but only in fiction. Every human being stands out, in form 
and feature, in taste and disposition, separate from every other. 
And our minds are as different as our faces. We do not think 
alike any more than we look alike. Philosophers dwell upon 
columns and classes of humanity ; there is very little of it in 
the Bible. Its histories revolve about the individual. In the 
throng or the dinner company, Jesus notices the trembling 
one at the hem of His garment, or the sorrowing one washing 
His feet with tears. His discourses were most frequently to 
single hearers; and He reckoned His converts, not by the 
(218) 



Divisions Hurt our Variety, 219 

mass, but by the unit. " There is joy in heaven over one sin- 
ner that repenteth." Nothing is plainer to the consciousness 
or profounder in its meaning than the solitariness of each 
human life. Surrounded as we may be, we have each a dis- 
tinct history which none but ourselves can understand, hopes 
and sorrows into which no other mortal can intrude. Books 
tell of societies and armies and nations — the real record is of 
the lone man struggling in seclusion ; breathing prayers heard 
only by his God, and going at last, with none but Him, into 
the shadows. 

So it is in the Kingdom of Grace. How diverse the charac- 
ters of Holy Writ — the rustic Amos, the imperial Solomon ; 
Moses so meek, Paul so spirited ; John contemplative, James 
practical ; yet all beloved of God. In running the boundaries 
of His Church, Christ made a wide sweep. He included Gaul 
and Goth, Roman and Scythian, African and Asiatic in one 
commonwealth. He did not destroy their peculiarities, or 
conform them to one type, but drew them to Himself just as 
they were. After their new birth into the kingdom, the Chris- 
tian Jew was still a seeker after supernatural signs, the Chris- 
tian Greek an admirer of dialectic wisdom, the Christian Ro- 
man an organizer of men ; and close as they may gather about 
the Cross to-day, the Scottish disciple remains metaphysical, 
the Celt mercurial, the German dreamy. 

That original element, or chemical power in the sunlight 
which brings up vegetation, is a single force, but what a wealth 
of shape it develops ! It scallops the oak leaf and tapers the 
chestnut ; it covers the catalpa with fans and the fir-tree with 
spines ; it colors some plants with bronze, some with scarlet, 
and some with gold ; it brings from one a beautiful flower, 
from another a delightful fragrance ; from one a pleasant fruit, 
from another a valuable medicine ; yet all, from the Banian 
tree whose branches cover five acres, to the floweret we can- 
not see without stooping, all are but one thing — transmuted 
sunshine — from a single source, but infinite in form. In the 
Museum of Natural History at Paris there are 56,000 species of 
plants exhibit d, all different. We take the microscope and 
find that no two leaves, no two blades of grass upon the whole 
earth are molded in the very same form of beauty. And just 
as each tree or shrub or fern feels the breath of returning 
spring after its own fashion, so the Holy Spirit works upon 



2 20 Divisions Hurt our Variety. 

each Christian heart in a peculiar way — inspiring one with the 
gift of teaching, another with the repose of faith ; one with 
ardent love, another with uncommon zeal. He breathes, and 
one becomes mighty in prayer, another strong in patience ; 
one a warrior to resist the enemy, another like the violet to 
perfume the foot that treads upon him. 

As we go up the scale this diversity becomes greater ; it 
always increases as we grow in grace. The American face has 
a far more varied expression than the African, and if left free, 
American churches would have a hundred times the variety 
of their outposts in heathendom. 

CHRISTIAN VARIETY A BLESSING. 

It increases the CImrch's stre7tgth. The more varied the 
forces united, the greater the power. A cable wrought of 
many strands of wire is tougher than a solid rod of iron ; we 
make our suspension bridges of wires, not of bars. The secret 
of American success is in our motto — *' E pluribus unum" — 
one from many ; public harmony from individual freedom. 
The grandeur of Solomon's temple was due to the fact that 
each man in the nation did what was in him to do for the one 
object. Some handled sledges, others chisels ; some worked 
in the quarries, others on the scaffold. The everlasting Church 
of God will be upreared in the same manner, when every one 
in his own way, drilling, blasting, carving, or polishing, shall 
combine to push on the single purpose. 

Each Christian has his gifts and his deficiencies ; unite the 
gifts so as to make up for the deficiencies, and you can accom- 
plish anything. A missionary in the South of Africa saw 
some lepers at work. Two of them were sowing peas. One 
had no hands, the other had no feet, these members being 
wasted away by disease. The one without hands carried on 
his back the one without feet, who, holding the bag of seed 
dropped every now and then a pea, which the other with his 
feet pressed into the ground ; so between the two they man- 
aged their work. Christians are like those lepers ; one has an 
eye to see, another has a hand to scatter, and a third has a 
foot to go ; each has some capacity, none are complete ; let 
them unite their capacities in that way, supplying each other's 
wants and bearing each other's burdens, and they will secure 
the harvest. In a word, while preserving the liberty of each, 



Divisions Hurt our Variety. 221 

let us attain under, the Spirit a union of all — as the poet has 
expressed it, " Distinct like the billows, yet one like the sea," 
and the Church will soon begin to cover the earth. 

It increases the ChurcJt s beauty. The definition of beauty 
is — " Variety in harmony." The lowest idea in art is that of 
uniformity ; sameness is its first and infant thought ; so many 
things in a row, all alike, please the child's fancy ; but the 
cultured taste loves the blending of contrasts. We paint our 
pictures with many tints, fashion our bouquets with different 
flowers, and compose our music by harmonizing discords. 

The Miserere of Allegri, performed at the Sistine chapel at 
Rome during Passion Week, is probably the grandest music 
of human creation. As the very hour of Christ's death ap- 
proaches, in the evening, fifteen plaintive psalms are sung, 
and after each psalm one of the fifteen lights on the altar is 
extinguished. When the fifteenth psalm is ended, and the 
last light gone out and the darkness of the grave reigns in 
the chapel — then arises the Miserere. The impression is inde- 
scribable — the strains seem to come from the other world. 

Taine, writing from Rome, says of it : 

" One can only imagine such sweetness, melancholy, sublimity. Three 
points are very striking — discords abound, so as to produce what, in ears 
like ours, accustomed to agreeable sensations, we call false notes. The 
parts are multiplied in an extraordinary degree, so that the sam.e chord 
contains three or four harmonies, and two or three discords all constantly 
decomposed and recomposed in its various portions. Some voice at every 
instant is heard detaching itself through its own theme — the irrepressible 
sigh of the suffering heart which can and will find rest only in God." 

This is, perhaps, our highest reach toward celestial beauty. 
There is, we are told, " one glory of the sun, another glory of 
the moon, and another glory of the stars, and one star differ- 
eth from another star in glory." We talk of the "■ eternal 
fitness of things;" it is this very adjustment of unlike mate- 
rials into magnificent combination. 

We look forward to the Millennium as a time of union ; so 
it will be ; but not the union of those who are alike, who hold 
the same opinions. There will be harmony, but not unison. 
There could not be harmony of opinion, if there was but one 
opinion. The Millennial Church will be one, and each Chris- 
tian will be a sect in it. When Zion shall arise and put on 
her beautiful garments, her robes, like the hangings of the 



22 2 Divisions Htivt our Variety, 

Tabernacle, will be wrought in gold and divers colors. The 
whole Church will love God as one man, and each individual 
will show that love in his own way. 

We look up to Heaven, and what do we see ? A City with 
twelve gates — '■^ on the East three gates, on the North three 
gates, on the South three gates, and on the West three gates.'* 
*' And I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man can 
number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues.'* 
What does it mean ? It means that from opposite quarters 
of the theological compass, from opposite quarters of human 
life, through different modes of training and conversion, will 
the weary travelers enter that blessed City. They will come, 
some from the Cathedral, some from the Conventicle, and 
some from the Camp-meeting, and nothing indicates that they 
will ever lose their individuality. The hints given us show 
the contrary. There is not one mansion there, but many. 
The tree of life there, we are told, bears " twelve manner of 
fruits" for every different peculiarity of taste. Identity will 
not be disturbed. Moses, when he revisited the earth on the 
Mount of Transfiguration, was still Moses, and Elijah was 
still Elijah. The saints are not merged into one another. 
Peter and John and Paul are, no doubt, as unlike in heaven 
as they were here. John Calvin and John Wesley walk arm- 
in-arm, Leighton and Whitefield, Doddridge and Chalmers 
hold blessed converse ; but the voice, the thought, the way 
of looking at things will be each man's own. The wall of that 
City, we are told, is garnished with all manner of precious 
stones ; there is the dark jasper, the blue sapphire, the green 
emerald, the yellow chrysolite, the crimson sardius, the violet 
amethyst, and the rest, all reflecting the light of the Great 
White Throne, but each with its own hue. 

VARIETY ESSENTIAL TO HAPPINESS. 

To have a delightful family, you must bring together in 
love, parents and children, boys and girls, grandparents and 
babies ; a good mother-in-law or maiden aunt make it all the 
better. Classify these different parties and house them by 
themselves, and you make every one miserable. Visit any of 
our institutions called '' Homes for old men," " Homes for old 
ladies," or " Homes for children," and you will be saddened 
by the depression and peevishness that always exist. The 



Divisio7'is Hurt our Variety. 223 

trouble is, they are too precisely and unnaturally sorted out. 
The old man, seeing nothing but gray hairs and wrinkled 
faces around him, reduplications of himself, is constantly 
reminded of his own feebleness, and is wretched ; put him 
even in a tenement house with some children, and he will 
brighten up. 

So in the Church. To be happy, a congregation must be 
composed of all sorts and conditions of men. Says an ancient 
writer: 

" The holy oil of the sanctuary was made of many spices, compounded 
by the art of the perfumer ; to note unto us that those duties are sweetest 
which are made up in a communion of saints." 

The societies and sects which are most particularly classi- 
fied are the most quarrelsome and unhappy. There is not 
enough range ; there is too much sameness of companionship. 
Count Ccnfaloneira's story of his life in the Austrian prison 
gives a valuable suggestion about this. Says he : 

"Fifteen years I existed in a dungeon ten feet square. During six years 
I had a companion. I never could rightly distinguish his face in the eter- 
nal twilight of our cell. The first year we talked incessantly together. We 
related our past lives over and over again ; the next year we communicated 
to each other our ideas on all subjects ; the third year we had no ideas to 
communicate ; the fourth, at intervals of a month or so, we would open our 
lips to ask some trifling question ; the fifth year we were entirely silent ; 
the sixth, he was taken away — I never knew whether to execution or lib- 
erty — but 1 was glad he was gone ; even solitude was better than the vision 
of that pale, vacant face." 

These were both estimable, high-toned gentlemen, but shut 
within the same walls, they made each other wretched. 

It recalls the story of the Siamese Twins. It was only after 
their death that the public was informed of the social relations 
of these two men with each other. All knew that they wanted 
the bond severed, that they went to Europe for that purpose, 
and only gave up the idea when death was proved inevitable ; 
but the desire was ascribed to the physical inconveniences 
of the ligament ; little was thought of the unhappy mental 
effects of the inseparable tie. Chang and Eng were men of 
good principle, honest in their dealings, excellent in their 
household, and both members of the Baptist denomination, 
but they had to stay together; though distinct persons in all 



2 24 Divisions Hurt oin^ Variety, 

their thoughts, acts, and sensations, each was inexorably 
chained to the other, always and everywhere. This was too 
much. They became burdensome to each other ; their inner 
life was a hopeless discontent ; a mutual aversion existed ; 
yes, it is almost certain that they hated one another, although 
this feeling seldom found expression in words. Even after 
their baptism they would occasionally give way to fits of 
savage rage, and in one of these, the life of one was actually 
attempted by the other. But loving or hating made no dif- 
ference in the bond ; that was always there, and so they settled 
down into gloomy silence, and rarely was one ever known to 
speak to the other. 

Christ carefully avoided this thing in forming His Church. 
He forbid sorting, and forbid the members of a sort being 
manacled together. By His arrangement, each Church, com- 
prising all the believers in a place, and all varieties of taste 
and opinion, was to be a microcosm, a diminutive world ; and 
the bond was to be no unyielding, inelastic ligature, but 
merely this : " Little children, love one another." The high- 
est earthly delight would comxe from such a free and loving 
association as this. In destroying this arrangement, the sects 
have brought upon us untold misery. Binding together those 
nearest alike, they have produced the very best conditions 
for strife. In a barnyard it is not the different kinds of ani- 
mals that fight, so much as it is the different animals of the 
same kind ; gobblers fight gobblers, cocks fight cocks, and 
dogs fight dogs ; and people nearly alike are most apt to 
grow tired of each other and quarrel. There is far more 
trouble within each sect than there is between the different 
sects. 

Consider the facts. The High and Low Church parties in 
the Episcopal communion, bound together like the Siamese 
Twins by their inflexible Prayer-book, have for three hundred 
years filled Christendom with their bickerings. The Open 
and Close communion parties among the Baptists are making 
every Baptist society in the land a scene of dissension. They 
have no such bittern-ess for the rest of us as they have for 
each other. ''All visiting Christians from your country," 
once said the great London Baptist preacher Spurgeon to an 
American friend, " all visiting Christians from your country 
commune with us except the Baptists^ 



Divisions Hurt our Variety. 225 

The LutJierans of the United States are particularly clan- 
nish and particularly discordant. The Lutheran Observer says : 

" The past fifty years have only created unnecessary and injurious divis- 
ions within our fold. Four general Lutheran bodies and twice as many 
independent Lutheran synods now exist, without unity, harmony, or co- 
operation. They neither recognize or extend fellowship, but denounce and 
antagonize each other. Strife and contention, producing alienation and 
schism, have free course among them." 

The Americmi Lutheran says : 

" When we send delegates to other denominations, it is asked, Why not, 
then, send delegates to our Lutheran brethren who are members of our 
own household of faith } We answer : Presbyterians, Congregationalists, 
Moravians, Methodists, etc., recognize and treat us as Christian brethren ; 
they interchange pulpits and commune with us ; whereas our Symbolic 
brethren deny us the right to call ourselves Lutherans, and regard us as 
impostors for assuming that name ; they do not admit us to their pulpits 
or communion tables." 

In every sect among us there is this tugging at the chain ; 
the shorter the chain the- greater the struggle. On our West- 
ern plains they sometimes find a pair of bucks' horns inter- 
locked. The deer at play get their antlers linked so that they 
cannot get them apart. Then they fight till they die ; they 
always fight, and always die. There are denominations among 
us in just that fix — pinioned together by the leashes of sec- 
tarian law, hopeless, exhausted, dead. 

VARIETY INFINITE. 

The blunder of the day is not recognizing that Christian 
variety is infinite ; that it is the characteristic and right of 
each individual believer. Popery tried to make the world 
think alike ; we have found that to be wrong. The Reform- 
ers tried to have each iiation think alike ; we have found that 
to be wrong ; but ^ve still cling to the error in supposing that 
the sect should be uniform. 

It is an utter mistake. The whole idea of likeness is un- 
scriptural and false. Each Christian is an indepen l^nt crea- 
tion, made from his own pattern, with his own pjc iliar cast 
of mind, and with his own separate capacities and experi- 
ences ; and the business of the Church is to train up this 
individual, e-ducate him, bring him out, develop the particular 
good thing that is in him, whatever it is. But the sects divide 
15 



2 26 Divisions Hurt otir Variety. 

us all into a few classes, and expect each Christian to assimi- 
late with his class. They furnish a few different systems of 
opinion and forms of worship from which we are to select. 
It looks like an assortment ; and some have been stupid 
enough to exclaim, " Oh, I like to see the different denomina- 
tions ; they give a variety ! " What a variety ! It is allow- 
ing one to choose whether he will be confined in the Tombs, 
or on Blackwell's Island, or at Sing Sing, or at Auburn. We 
may select what denomination we please, no doubt, but once 
in, our choosing ends. 

We once asked a leading thinker, whose name is known all 
over the land, why, with his pronounced Christian sentiments, 
he did not joi|i in with God's people and make a profession 
of religion. His reply was, " I would be delighted to join the 
Church, but I cannot coincide with any denomination. See 
how I am fixed. I hold with the Baptists about baptism, but 
I scorn their exclusiveness. I enjoy the Episcopal worship, 
but hate its relics of Popery. I believe with the Presbyte- 
rians on the doctrines of grace ; with the Congregationalists 
on the liberty of the churches ; with the Methodists on class- 
meetings, and with the Quakers on morality. Where, then, 
shall I go ? " Sure enough, where was he to go ? We can- 
not assort from the assortments ; we cannot take from one 
here and from another there, and make up from all the creed 
and system which exactly suits us. The necessity of every 
sect is conformity, and when we belong to it we must adopt 
its ways and views. We must take it whole ; when we leave 
the King's highway for one of these human by-paths, we 
must keep in its ruts, turn with its corners, and go through 
its mud-holes with our companions. We may choose either 
Calvin, or Cranmer, or Luther, or Wesley, but having chosen 
our leader we must follow him. 

To choose one from our list of walled and fenced-in sects, 
is no adequate range for millions of believers with their mil- 
lion possibilities of outreach and scope. No sect is as varied 
as the mind or as broad as Scripture. The Way of Life, as 
we find it in the Bible, is not a beaten turnpike where all 
travel in just one direction ; it is only here and there an in- 
dicated spot. Faith, Repentance, Conversion, Regeneration, 
Holiness, are points showing the general course. Between 
them the whole country lies open ; one may go upon the 



Divisions Hurt our Variety. 227 

mountains, or may lie down in green pastures and be fed 
beside the still waters. In the Pilgrim's Progress, Christiana 
and her family did not tread in the precise footsteps of Chris- 
tian ; they all went through the Wicket Gate, but not through 
the Slough of Despond ; all through the grounds of Beulah, 
but not through the castle of Giant Despair. Most particu- 
larly does the apostle emphasize the fact that the leadings of 
Providence are diverse with every soul ; that the gifts and 
work of the Spirit pertain not to class or denomination, but 
to each individual man : 

" Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 

" And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. 

"And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which 
worketh all in all. 

" But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit 
withal. 

" For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom ; to another, the 
word of knowledge by the same Spirit ; 

" To another, faith by the same Spirit ; to another, the gifts of healing 
by the same Spirit ; 

" To another, the working of miracles ; to another, prophecy ; to an- 
other, discerning of spirits ; to another, divers kinds of tongues ; to another, 
the interpretation of tongues : 

•' But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to 
every man severally as he will." — i COR. xii. 4-1 1. 

WORSHIP. 

Each soul being distinct, will naturally worship in its own 
peculiar fashion, and according to circumstance and feeling. 

As a man, Christ often engaged in worship, and it varied 
in each instance. Sometimes with the people he worshiped 
in the Temple, and sometimes upon the mountain-side He 
communed with heaven, alone. He left us no fixed cere- 
monial. He gave a comprehensive form of prayer, and also 
set the example of the most fervid secret devotion. The 
mode He left to the individual judgment, only specifying 
that it should be " in spirit and in truth." One word from 
Jesus would have settled the form of baptism and the use of 
a liturgy, but the word was not given. As Jesus looked over 
the earth. He saw men everywhere expressing their feelings 
differently — in warmer climes, mourning with outcries and 
rent garments and dust on the head ; in colder zones, ruling 
their grief and hiding their hurt from the public eye. He 



2 28 Divisions Hurt our Variety. 

knew that some of us would barrel our worship in forms, and 
others would let it flow free as a mountain stream — yet He 
left no command ; every sort of homage, from the stately 
ritual to the negro prayer-meeting, was to be accepted which 
was sincere. Unity is enjoined in Scripture times without 
number ; uniformity, never. 

In practice, this divine arrangement would result in an end- 
less diversity of methods. Each assembly of believers, being 
entirely free, would worship in the peculiar style that suited 
them ; like the households of a city, each family would con- 
duct its own regime ; no two of them would be alike, and no 
one of them would be the same all the time. There would 
be no more monotony than there is among the forest birds. 

This arrangement would take the mode of worship — the 
cause of nine-tenths of our quarrels — out of public discussion. 
Being a private and not a public affair, we would let our 
neighbors alone about it. An honest Dutch farmer on the 
Mohawk, once being asked as to the proper manner of wor- 
ship, put the case in this way : " Veil, den ; ven we ride our 
wheat to Albany, some say dis road de best, and some say 
dat ; but it makes noting of difference, for ven we get dere 
dey never ask vich vay we come if our wheat is goody Just 
so, we, when we find a man's heart is right, and that he is 
really on the road to heaven, will cease to care about the 
particular way he takes. 

This freedom and flexibility of worship is prevented by our 
sects. They force our infinite natural variety into a few fixed 
methods. God intended millions of styles ; they give us half 
a dozen. God meant each believer to lift up his heart in his 
own way ; they drill hundreds of thousands of us to sing the 
same songs, pray the same prayers, and go over and over a 
precise and invariable routine. We look over these denom- 
inations, and they seem like prisoners in a penitentiary com- 
ing out of their workshops to dinner ; here is a long line of 
Christians, and there is a long line of Christians, and yonder 
is another long line, and each line walks in regular lock-step, 
every man with exactly the same turn of the head and crook 
of the knee and tread of the foot. It is utterly unscriptural, 
unnatural, and injurious. 



Divisions Hurt our Variety, 229 

RECIPROCAL BENEFIT. 

Says the Rev. Thomas K. Davis, of Ohio : 

" Each denomination possesses some truth or some grace which has been 
neglected by the others. I love the Church of England, its decent order 
and forms, and its embracing all baptized households as dearly as a good 
Episcopalian does. I believe in the emotional, heart-felt, earnest piety of 
the Methodist brethren. I think I am as devoted to the doctrines of grace 
as a Presbyterian, and as firm a believer in personal regeneration and in 
Church purity as a Baptist, and I v/ish to be as simple, and friendly, and 
kind, and good as a Quaker, and as free and unfettered in thought as a 
Congregationalist. I am not willing, I cannot, indeed, as a Bible christian, 
confine myself to the one particular type of piety characteristic of a par- 
ticular branch of the Church. I do long for the time when the barriers 
which separate me from a pious Catholic, a devout Episcopalian, a whole- 
souled Methodist, a conscientious Baptist, a staunch Presbyterian, a hb- 
erty-loving Congregationalist, a Christ-like Friend, shall be broken down,' 
and when we can all feel that, as we are one in Christ, so we are one in 
sympathy and one in work." 

This expresses a feeling that is widely prevailing. Each 
sect has some good thing in it, and that good thing is needed 
by all. Presbyterians cherish the doctrines of grace — ought 
we not all to cherish the doctrines of grace ? Methodists 
have zeal — would not a general infusion of it be a blessing ? 
Baptists regard personal rather than perfunctory consecration 
to Christ — isn't it well for every Christian to keep that in his 
eye ? The Friends set great store by spiritual communion — 
would more spiritual communion hurt any of us ? Episco- 
palians feel that all ought to join in public worship — are 
Episcopalians the only ones who need to feel that ? 

Instead of keeping these different views and tastes apart, 
there should be the utmost pains to bring them together. 
They are all needed in every congregation. A visitor at the 
commencement exercises of the Yale Theological Seminary, 
admired the grace of the young speakers, but thought that 
from the quiet culture of the place, they lacked magnetism 
and fire, and suggested that what they needed was a circuit 
of rousing Methodist camp-meetings. Had he gone to a 
camp-meeting he would have suggested that the forest ora- 
tors get a little of the accuracy and finish of Yale. It is 
in large families that children are brought up best ; they learn 
a thousand wholesome things from each other ; their views 
are broadened, and their arrogance snubbed into modesty. 



230 Divisions Hurt our Variety, 

Divided into sects we lose the advantage of this mutual in- 
fluence. Those who have the same inclinations are grouped 
together — the refined and formal go by themselves into an 
Episcopal corner ; the severely logical club themselves in a 
Presbyterian corner ; and those who shout, " Hallelujah," go 
off into a Methodist corner — consequently they are no help 
or restraint to one another. 

More than that ; each party is injured by the classification. 
It has been found by experiments with the prismatic colors, 
that any particular color by itself is hurtful to vegetation. 
Green light is as fatal to a plant as darkness, and red light is 
almost as bad ; any color taken singly is detrimental ; it is 
only when they come in combination as white light that their 
effect is healthy. So it is with Christians ; one set of views 
and one kind of companions work bad with us ; we become 
distorted, our peculiarities are intensified, and we grow more 
and more one-sided. Says the Rev. Thomas E. Babb, of 
Massachusetts : 

" How do these strongly varying tastes happen to exist ? Are these 
extreme temperaments natural and necessary ? Does yielding to their 
fastidious demands produce the best effect upon them ? These are proper 
questions to ask ; and a little thought on the subject will reveal the truth 
that denominational divisions are, to a great degree, accountable for the 
extremely exacting nature of men's peculiar temperaments. 

" Suppose you have two boys, one rough and boisterous, the other gentle. 
The former seems by nature to be coarse in his tastes and somewhat lack- 
ing in refinement of feeling, while the other shows a natural susceptibility 
to culture, and even fineness of texture without it. * Send them away to 
different schools,' you say, ' the former to a school suited to his tastes, the 
latter to one of culture. How can they be expected to associate } ' you 
ask. ' Their natures lead them in different directions.' Very true ; and 
the longer they live separated the more they will probably diverge. And 
why ? Because, with these different bents in the beginning, you now propose 
to surround them with influences which tend to intensify the dispositions 
which are native to them. Would not the rude boy be improved by instruc- 
tion in gentle ways ? And would the quiet one be injured if he were made 
more demonstrative — a little bolder ? Going each in his own way, these 
boys will become abnormally developed in opposite extremes. How will it 
do to keep them together ? Bring them both home, and what will be the 
result ? Everything beneficial. The first will draw out and strengthen the 
latter ; and the latter will tame down the former. 

" Just so it is with denominations. It can scarcely be questioned that 
some are more boisterous than it were well for them to be. These are 
ranters. But why ? How did they become such ? Why, by ranting, and 
being allowed to go off by themselves and rant, and rant on. Nothing in 



Divisions Httrt our Variety, 231 

their doctrine made it ; nor can half of their boisterousness be charged to 
taste or temperaments ; it is chargeable to the unbalanced education of 
denominationalism. They have none of that subduing grace which would 
come from association with more quiet worshipers. 

" On the other hand, there are stiff, unemotional worshipers, who are 
shocked by the presence of anything which approaches to ranting, even 
a single shout of ' hallelujah ' or ' am.en,' from one whose heart is aglow. 
These are as much in fault, just as much as the ranters. But why are 
they so cold ? Because by denominational separation they are thrust by 
themselves to mope, and mope on. Yet a half of their lifelessness is not 
to be laid to the charge of nature ; it is the result of the unbalanced edu- 
cation of denominationalism. Indeed, it is a serious question what will 
become of Methodists, Presbyterians, EpiscopaHans, Baptists, if shut up 
to themselves. It deprives them of that balance which God supplies to 
man largely as the happy results of various temperaments associating with 
each other." 

Without this salutary counterpoise, each sect has gone too 
far in its pecuHar direction ; one in its services has gone to 
the extreme of formaHsm, another to the extreme of bald- 
ness ; one makes too little of preaching, another too little of 
worship. 

This accounts for that reaching out we see on all sides for 
the advantages that others possess. The Episcopalians have 
certain anthems and litanies grand and beautiful, and hal- 
lowed by the ages ; they put their little sectarian laws around 
these and compel their continual use. The result is, thousands 
among them long for the privilege of extempore prayer. The 
venerable Dr. Muhlenburg, of New York, once said that he 
never began the Morning Service, '' Dearly beloved brethren," 
without delight ; and that he never got up in the afternoon 
to repeat according to law the same words, '^ Dearly beloved 
brethren," etc., without feeling sick. On the other hand, a 
score of Brooklyn clergymen, with but one Episcopalian 
among them, once compared views, and found that nineteen 
of them desired more liturgy. 

The Rev. David Breed, a prominent Congregational minis- 
ter of Connecticut, says : 

" We need some change ; our services have become stereotyped, our 
simple forms need vivifying, and some new element introduced to give them 
more vitality, and to awaken a deeper interest on the part of the congrega- 
tion. And what less objectionable than the responsive reading of the very 
words of Scripture by the pastor and people ? " 

Dr. Storrs and Dr. Budington, of the same denomination, 



232 Divisions Hurt our Variety, 

have also tried to introduce responsive worship ; and a Pres- 
byterian society in Rochester got up a prayer-book for them- 
selves complete. Thus we have the remarkable spectacle of 
Congregationalists and Presbyterians straining for a liturgy, 
and Episcopalians straining to get out of one. 

There is discontent everywhere. Take the matter of Itin- 
eracy — an admirable arrangement for young ministers and 
those on the frontier, an abominable discomfort in our settled 
parishes. By sectarian rule one denomination practices it 
everywhere, the others nowhere. The Episcopal bishop of 
Nebraska expresses a strong desire for the itinerant system 
in his diocese, and hundreds of Methodist societies in the 
East are equally anxious to get rid of it. 

Take Baptism. Thousands of Baptists would be glad of 
some appropriate way of dedicating their little ones to God, 
and thousands of Pedo-baptists prefer to make their confes- 
sion by immersion. The sects are everywhere busy pushing 
back those who would step over the lines. Strong societies, 
like Mr. Talmage's Presbyterian and Plymouth Congrega- 
♦ tional, do as they please, and have Baptisteries, but when a 
rural clergyman, like the Rev. Mr. Clarke of the Lackawanna 
Presbytery, immerses a convert, he is censured for it. Sects 
always maintain uniformity where they can. 

COMPRESSION AND SCHISM. 

To fit properly, a pair of boots should be made on one's 
own lasts. No man can put a hat on his neighbor's head 
just right ; the neighbor invariably replaces it to suit himself. 
The same man is not always the same. No man ever makes 
his signature twice ahke ; if you see a perfectly accurate 
J repetition of it, that's an electrotype. A live prayer-meeting 
is unique every time, distinct from every meeting before, and 
from every one that will follow ; and when you see great 
masses of Christians, East and West, cultured and illiterate, 
going along forever doing the same things over and over, 
thinking, singing, praying, and moving all alike, as if they 
were bricks or candles run in the same molds, you may be 
sure something has been hurt. A thousand natural exuber- 
ances, tastes, and out-buddings of thought which might have 
beautified and enriched the Church have been suppressed. 
According to the Grecian legend, Procrustes, a famous rob- 



Divisions Hurt our Variety. 233 

ber, had an iron bedstead, on which he used to tie all who 
fell into his hands. If they were shorter than the bed-, he 
stretched them till they fitted it ; if they were longer, he cut 
off what extended over. Our sects have been at that work, 
stretching and clipping Christians to fit their measure and 
make them alike ; and there is trouble everywhere because 
of it. 

The evil breaks out in one of two ways. 

More usually it eventuates in ScJiism. A thinker, in the 
course of his investigations, finds in his sect some custom or 
dogma which ought to be corrected. No sooner does he 
set about it, than he comes in contact with the Sectarian 
Managers. 

Let us turn aside a moment and consider this interesting 
class of persons. There is a great difference between the lead- 
ers of a community, and the leaders of a party. A commu- 
nity, made up of all sorts of people, seeks its broadest-minded 
citizens to conduct its affairs. The most candid and sensible 
set of men you could pick out to-day in America, would be, 
as a class, our Justices of the Peace. While our political par- 
ties are reeking with fraud, our townships, as a rule, are man- 
aged with honesty. While the political parties of England 
are up to their elbows in bribery and corruption, the munici- 
pal government of London, which is distinct from politics, 
has hardly had a case of defalcation for five hundred years. 

We may see in this a reason why Providence designed Chris- 
tians to be grouped by localities rather than by sects. The 
community wants in a leader wisdom, the party wants zeal. 
Now, as it doesn't take long for a man with small mind to 
make it up, and as he always makes it up strong, he has the 
most ready supply of zeal. Such a man can be depended on 
to stand by his faction under all circumstances ; he will battle 
for it right or wrong ; and so the management slides into his 
hands. Thus it comes about, in the most natural way in the 
world, both in the Church and in the State, that our parties, 
like our fishes, are steered by their tails. 

It is the great preachers that fill the public eye, but these 
are not the sectarian managers. Robert Hall was no more a 
party leader among the Baptists than Mr. Spurgeon is now. 
Chalmers was elbowed away from the Scotch Presbyterians, 
and Dr. Tyng has never held any but an ornamental position 



234 Divisions Hurt our Variety, 

among the Episcopalians. The real managers of our sects, 
those who control the party valves, are a set of men we see 
no more of than our railway passengers see of their engineers, 
men chosen not for their general erudition, but for their abil- 
ity to keep their eye on a single track, and to drive straight 
ahead. 

With this class of men, the Thinker finds himself in conflict. 
He looks on them as in error ; they look on him as refractory. 
For protection he combines with his friends and forms a party 
within the sect. Our denominations are full of these parties. 
The Episcopalians are about as free from them as any, but 
the list of parties in that sect is given as follows : 

" The radical Low-Churchmen, the moderate Low-Churchmen, the Con- 
servative Low-Churchmen, the evangelical Broad-Churchmen, the exclusive 
Broad-Churchmen, the evangelical Churchmen, the moderate High-Church- 
men, the radical High-Churchmen, the Puseyites, and the extreme ritualists.'' 

The time comes, when on some exciting question the Thinker 
and his party are voted down. He refuses to submit, for he 
feels himself in the majority. The sectarian rulers have the 
most votes, but he has the most reasons ; he feels that God 
is with him, and the side God is on is always in the majority. 
The rulers now put their foot down ; the word must comes 
into the dispute. We all love that word ; it is delightful to 
have our conscience the rule for other folks' conduct, to tell 
our neighbors what they must believe and do. '' Every man," 
said Martin Luther, "is born with a Pope within him." And 
for a perfect example of intolerance, see a sectarian leader 
when obstructed by one of these unmanageable thinkers. 
Sooner or later the result is sure to come ; the reformer and 
his party flake off from the parent sect and start another one. 
Thus, schism. This process, in one stage or another, is going 
on all the time in every sect among us. 

Our denominational rebels have unfortunately never yet 
struck the root of the difficulty. Resisting sectarian laws, 
they have gone out and made new laws — better ones, perhaps 
— -but still, laws ; and so have planted the seed for future 
division. The trouble is in our making laws at all for Christ's 
free servants. So long as we bind Christians into uniform 
ways, by canons or usages, written or unwritten, so long shall 
we have sects ad infinitujft. 



Divisions Hurt our Variety, 235 

Some of our denominations have kindly taken trouble to 
illustrate this fact. The Baptists, for instance. They hold 
that all should make a profession of religion in the uniform 
way of immersion ; they divide from the rest of Christians on 
that. Next they say, that none should be admitted to the 
Lord's table without this uniform profession ; they divide 
among themselves on that. One of the fragments goes on 
still further to say that feet-washing should also be required ; 
they divide again on that, and at the last accounts the Feet- 
washers were in hot water among themselves as to whether 
this pedal ablution should take place before or after commun- 
ion. Still another division of the Baptists — the Mennonites — a 
very excellent people, are separated into the New and Old ; 
the points of dispute being the cultivation of flowers and the 
permitting of pianos ; and a still minuter division of the Men- 
nonites are the Omish and the Manese, two irreconcilable 
parties who are disputing whether it is more righteous to 
wear buttons or hooks and eyes. 

Thus, the compression of sect fills Christendom with schism 
and strife. The more strictly we enforce uniformity the wider 
we scatter. The tendency of it is to universal disintegration. 
Let the denominations carry out to the end their idea of mak- 
ing us assimilate, and it would disperse every band of Chris- 
tians under the sun, and send every believer off into a gloomy 
and solitary sect by himself. '' How is your church getting 
on?" was once asked of a rigorous old Scotchman, who, bent 
upon associating with none except those who agreed with 
him in every particular, had separated in turn from the Kirk, 
the Free Church, the United Presbyterians, and several lesser 
bodies; " How is your church getting on?" " Pretty weel," 
he replied, " pretty weel ; there's naebody belangs to it noo 
but my brither and myseF, and I'm nae sure of Sandy's sound- 
ness ! " 

WORSE THAN SCHISM. 

But, sectarian pressure does not always produce rebellion. 

There are so-called "well-ordered" churches which keep 
on in a quiet, uniform way, without any trouble from reform- 
ers or secession. The pastor of a church of that kind once 
said : " They are all one, completely one ; there is not a 
symptom of irregularity or outbreak ; they do not care what 



236 Divisions Hurt our Variety, 

is preached to them or what goes on around them; they are all 
frozen together '' This is worse than schism ; when a man is 
carried in from a sleigh, it is a bad sign if he feels no tingle of 
pain ; the acutest anguish is better than mortification. 

How little religious controversy there is in France. There 
has been hardly any of it since the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew's day. A Frenchman once boasted that while in Amer- 
ica we have many religions and only one soup, in his country 
they have many soups and only one religion. It is pretty 
much true, but it is no compliment to them. French Chris- 
tianity would diverge as much as ours had it not been crushed 
down. In the early period of the Reformation, the Bible v/as 
let loose among the people of Southern Europe ; men began 
to think about religion, and, of course, to think differently. 
The Emperor Charles V. tried to regulate this thought ; it 
kept him uncommonly busy ; so busy, that at last, in utter 
weariness of soul, he threw away his crown, and amused him- 
self in a monastery making time-pieces. It all flashed upon 
him there : " What a fool I have been ! " he exclaimed, " try- 
ing to make men think alike, when I cannot make even two 
clocks strike together ! " But soon the Inquisition was estab- 
lished ; the Bible was suppressed ; dissent was imprisoned and 
exiled and shot down in the streets, and uniformity was ac- 
complished, for men stopped thinking about religion and 
turned their minds to gravy. 

So we may by our stringent rules and inflexible creeds and 
social pressure kill all branching-out tendencies in the Chris- 
tian mind. Farmers do it with their hay ; they cut down 
grasses and flowers, dry them, pack them in bales, and bind 
them in an iron hoop. Those stalks never sprout. They are 
cured. So we may cure a sect of all digressive propensities, 
regulate and classify it, so that it will remain perfectly quiet, 
and stay just as we put it. We may put those who think 
this way here, and those who think that way there ; club the 
rich and refined together, and collect the poor and the coarse 
off by themselves, and bind our laws upon them all without 
a word of complaint. It will be when they become like the 
fish in Fulton Market. We once noticed a fish-stand there ; 
there was a great gathering from the briny deep ; the order 
was perfect ; the Blue-fish were in a regular pile ; the Weak- 
fish were together with noses all pointed the same way ; the 



Divisions Hurt our Variety. 237 

beautifully colored Mackerel aristocratically kept their dis- 
tance from their browner neighbors; the Bass exclusively 
occupied one corner, while the Eels convoluted together by 
themselves in another; it was the most quiet, uniform fish 
convention that ever we saw. There was only one drawback 
to it. They were dead. Better any eccentricities, better the 
wildest vagaries, than that. 



TOLERATION. 

The idea that has led Christian people to submit to these 
sectarian rulers and laws, is that likeness is necessary to Chris- 
tian fellowship ; it is strange that such an idea should prevail, 
for it is contrary to both Scripture and reason. The principle 
of the Gospel all through is that we should company with 
those who differ from us ; the perfection of Bible charity is 
" enduring all things." 

Household love does not depend upon likeness. A family 
gets along best when the man has thorough manly qualities, 
and the woman thorough womanly qualities. Nor only that, 
novels are full of the misery of married pairs who are ill- 
mated ; but our homes abound with pairs ill-mated, who not- 
withstanding their incompatibility, have settled down quietly 
and congenially together. How have they accomplished it 1 
Addison says : '' Two persons who have chosen each other 
out of all the species, to be each other's mutual comfort, 
have thereby bound themselves to be patient with each oth- 
er's imperfections." The drilling of experience has taught 
them that ; and so they have reached happiness in spite of 
incongruities. 

We have all heard the story of the old couple who, after 
quarreling for many years, at last settled down in conjugal 
felicity by taking into their house the two Scripture Bears. 
A neighbor, anxious to know about the sudden change, 
inquired of the good lady as to its cause. " Oh," said she, 
*' I and the old man learned out of Scripter that we must 
* Bear one another's burdens,' and ' Forbear one another in 
love,' and ever since we let in those two bears there's been no 
trouble at all ! " And Christian people will discover the true 
secret of fellowship and stop their quarrels, when, like this 
wise old couple, they learn to " bear and forbear." 



238 Divisions Hurt our Variety. 

This has been most eloquently set forth by the Rev. John 
Angell James : 

" Men have tried all kinds of methods, except the only right, effectual, 
and divinely appointed one, for gathering into union the broken and scat- 
tered fragments of the church, and for tuning to harmony its discordant 
voices. They have tried the compulsion of law, the pov^er of logic, the 
persuasion of eloquence, the subscription of articles, the application of 
tests, the authority of tradition, and yet all these means have signally failed 
not only to procure internal unity, but external uniformity. Emperors and 
kings, popes and prelates, councils and convocations, cabinets and senates, 
divines and lav^yers, have all employed their wits and exerted their hands 
in this great work of unity ; and yet, whatever have been their schemes, 
and with whatever diligence they have been applied, however they may 
have appealed to the fears, the reason, or the cupidity of the opposing 
parties, they have all left the Church as divided and inharmonious as they 
found it, and, in the language of despair, have confessed that union among 
Christians was a state of things never to be expected in the present world. 
And yet there, upon the very surface of revelation, where every eye can see 
it, lies, and has lain for eighteen centuries, a principle so simple that a child 
may understand it, which, if properly felt and judiciously applied, would 
have effected that which has ever been considered so necessary, and yet so 
difficult — ' Forbearing one ajiother in love' Divinely inspired, heaven 
descended, God-like sentence ! How simple, yet how sublime ! By what 
machination of Satan ; by what cunning artifice of ' the father of lies ;' 
by what operation of the deceitfulness of sin, or by what treachery of the 
desperately wicked heart of man, has the beauty of this precept been con- 
cealed, its force evaded, or its efficiency prevented } ' Forbearing one an- 
other in love.' This one short precept, universally obeyed, would set all 
right, and reduce all to order. It would not at once reconcile all minds, 
but it would harmonize all hearts. It would not amalgamate all churches 
into an external uniformity, but it would combine them all in the unity of 
the Spirit and the bond of peace." 

It is this blessed rule, generally known as the principle of 
Toleration^ which secures all the social and political peace we 
enjoy. Two little girls who got along remarkably well to- 
gether, were asked how it came about. " Oh," said one of 
them, '' it's because Addie lets me, and I let Addie." The 
children had discovered the secret — they let each other. 

The Masonic fraternity shows the value of this principle. 
From an ancient period this association has maintained the 
right of every man to be sovereign over his own mind. Without 
knowing their secrets, we have no doubt that Toleration com- 
prises the mystery they hide so well ; they do not require too 
much, do not ask for agreement on all points. Demanding 



Divisions Hurt our Variety. 239 

mutual chanty and respect, they leave each member to the 
unmolested enjoyment of his own opinions and tastes. Un- 
der shelter of this principle the order has escaped the fanat- 
icism of politics and creed ; has gone quietly on in the midst 
of religious anathemas and while civil war raged in the streets ; 
and has outlived every empire and institution on the earth, 
excepting only the imperishable Church of God. 

THE PRINCIPLE ACKNOWLEDGED. 

It is by toleration that our congregations maintain their 
peace. No society could hold together without it, and with 
it most prosperous ones are often formed from different ele- 
ments. Obeying the words of Paul to " keep the unity of 
the Spirit in the bond of peace," and understanding the 
" bond of peace " to mean the toleration of differences, they 
get along with all their odd material not only in harmony, 
but with great mutual benefit. 

Take Newman Hall's great Society in London for example. 
Its first pastor was Rowland Hill, an Episcopalian ; its sec- 
ond, Mr. Sherman, of the Countess of Huntington's connec- 
tion ; the third was a Congregationalist. The Society belongs 
to no sect, and its membership comprises Episcopalians, Pres- 
byterians, Baptists, Quakers, all sorts ; yet with its seventeen 
Sunday-schools, five hundred teachers, and fifty services a 
week at one place or another, it is one of the most harmo- 
nious bodies of Christians anywhere to be found. The Church 
of the Strangers in New York is founded on this principle ; 
its pastor. Dr. Deems, says : 

" Eleven different denominations are represented among us. We bap- 
tize by immersion and by sprinkling. We have a baptistery. We conse- 
crate children for those who desire it. We pray, some sitting and some 
standing, but with all our differences in mode and administrations and 
forms, we never in all the years of our existence as a church, have had the 
least unpleasantness or jar." 

The fact is, all our large and successful congregations are 
based on this principle. Their vigor and enterprise come 
from the many different elements and capacities they contain ; 
they are conglomerations of all sorts and conditions of men 
held together by the cohesive power of mutual toleration. 
There is no identity of opinion among them ; the members 



240 Divisions Hurt our Variety, 

differ from each other and from the preacher, but each lets 
the other think his own way, and so there is unity. The 
members of our great metropoHtan congregations are usually 
people who have no time to criticise their neighbors ; so they 
organize on the idea set forth by our forefathers on the cop- 
per cent of 1787. On one side of this coin were thirteen 
rings representing the Thirteen States, ranged in a circle, 
enclosing the motto, " We are one," and on the other side 
were the significant words, " Mind your own business." So 
these great congregations, though called Presbyterian and 
Episcopal and Congregational, are really nothing but large 
" Mind-your-own-business " societies. 

Indeed, the great sects themselves hold together by prac- 
ticing toleration to a certain extent. Requiring agreement 
on some abstract doctrine or trivial form, and organizing on 
that, they grant freedom on questions of practical concern. 
They insist on your being sprinkled or immersed, on your 
sitting or kneeling at the Lord's Supper, or your subscribing 
to some old theories of no earthly importance, but let you 
think for yourself on the Labor question, the Temperance 
question, the Worldly amusement question, the Woman's 
rights question, the Bible in our schools question, or the Re- 
ligion in the Constitution question. The Presbyterian Banner^ 
of Pittsburg, once said very truly : 

" There is no more controversy between the denominations than there is 
inside of each one of them. Gathering people into a single denomination 
does not preclude diversity of views or controversy by any means." 

The two chief divisions of the Presbyterian body united a 
few years ago. They had divided on the Calvinistic question, 
and they came together — how ? Neither the Old School nor 
the New School gave up their views. Princeton held to its 
theology and the Union Seminary to its theology, but they 
concluded to tolerate each other about the divine decrees, 
and so they came together. But if the principle is right, why 
did they not carry it out fully ? why did they stop half way ? 
If it is right to tolerate on the Calvinistic question, it is right 
to tolerate on the Congregational question, and on the Litur- 
gical question, and on the Immersion question. If by Scrip- 
tural forbearance the Old and New School can get along to- 
gether, we can all get along together on the same blessed 
principle, and the sects have no reason for existence. 



Divisions Hurt our Variety, 241 

A few years after their union, the Presbyterians, meeting in 
General Assembly at St. Louis, were agitated with the ques- 
tion of permitting women to speak or lead in devotion at 
their prayer-meetings. The Rev. Robert Aikman, of Madi- 
son, New Jersey, suggested that *' inasmuch as there was con- 
siderable doubt on the subject, the whole question be referred 
to the sanctified common sense of the ministers and elders of 
the Church." Which was accordingly done. But if the sanc- 
tified common sense in each society is competent to judge of 
such things, why not of other things, and what is the use of 
sectarian assemblies at all ? 

See how the Reformed Episcopalians managed with the 
Calvinistic question. Revising the old Thirty-nine Articles, 
they came to the seventeenth, which was delicate ground, as 
the Convention of about five score delegates had one hun- 
dred different opinions on it. So they fixed it thus. They 
quoted one text of Scripture which shows God's sovereignty, 
and then another text which shows man's free agency, and 
added : 

" This Church, accordingly, simply affirms these doctrines as the Word 
of God sets them forth, and submits them to the individual judgment of 
its members, as taught by the Holy Spirit." 

A very wise and Scriptural plan'; but it starts the question. 
If the Holy Spirit teaches each disciple as to the doctrines 
of grace, cannot He not teach them the smaller points ? If 
the seventeenth Article sends each man to examine the Bible 
for himself, should not the other Articles do so too ? If there 
is to be individual judgment and variety of opinion on the 
grandest truth of Christianity, can there not be also on lesser 
things ? In a word, the sects are fully committed to the prin- 
ciple of tolerating difference of opinion. Let them carry it 
out to its legitimate extent, and every divisional line would 
disappear. Christians of all kinds would come into loving fel- 
lowship, and Zion would rise from the dust. 

CONTROVERSY. 

The only thing required in order to unite the Church on 

the principle of toleration is, that we obey the command of 

St. Paul, " Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not 

to doubtful disputations." Controversy is a dangerous thing 

16 



242 Divisions Hurt our Variety, 

among Christians. Dr. Johnson used to say that if two peo- 
ple wished to Hve together in perfect harmony, they must 
avoid the topics on which they disagreed. Mr. Will Carleton 
has put the idea in verse. An unfortunate farmer who has 
been discussing with his wife, applies for legal separation : 

" Draw up the papers, lawyer, 

And make 'em good and stout. 
For things at home are crossways, 
And Betsey and I are out. 

" The first thing I remember 
Whereon we disagreed. 
Was something concerning heaven, 
A difference in our creed ; 

" We arg'ed the thing at breakfast, 
. We arg'ed the thing at tea ; 
And the more we arg'ed the question 
The more we didn't agree. 

" So I have talked with Betsey, 

And Betsey has talked with me, 
' And so we've agreed together 

* That we can't never agree." 

Our divisions in the Church have all come from arguing 
things we ought to leave alone. A wise old EngHsh bishop 
used to ask the candidates for the ministry, as they came be- 
fore him for examination, what course of argument they 
would pursue with dissenters. After the young men had 
each divulged his line of debate, the bishop would quietly 
observe, " My young friends, let me suggest to you my plan, 
which is to let them aloneT A most sagacious scheme. If 
preachers would discourse once a month on the duty of let- 
ting your neighbor alone, there would be immediate improve- 
ment in the Church. What good does your arguing with him 
do ? you cannot argue down our varieties. The Hindoos have 
a proverb, " Though you bathe a dog's tail in oil and bind it 
up in splints, you cannot get the crook out of it." While 
time lasts, and after time, too, we will have our peculiarities, 
and the only way to do is to let every man wag his own pecul- 
iarity in peace. Let us stop all this worry about our neigh- 
bor's opinions. Why do you meddle with him because he 
believes in immersion ? let him plunge three feet or thirty 



Divisions Hurt our Variety, 243 

feet in the water if he Hkes. Suppose the preacher does pre- 
fer to wear a gown, let him wear ten if he chooses. What 
difference does it make to you ? If you see above these 
things, all the more reason for tolerating him. The responsi- 
bility of toleration lies with those who have the wider vision. 

Each man thinks he can argue right, but so sure as we keep 
it up our fellowship will suffer. We dig and dig into each 
other, and after a while, love, the very thing the Church is 
founded on, gives way. We once visited the Mammoth Cave 
in Kentucky. On arriving at the hotel, we asked the colored 
waiter where the cave was. " Whar de cave I La, Massa, it 
am all under heah. It am only sixty foot from dis heah dinin'- 
room to de top ob Gorum's Dome. Do you see dat hole out 
da ? It was dug fur a well, and dey went too fur, and de bot- 
tom fell out ! '' So in our disputes we always go too far, we 
get heated and angry, the feeling of brotherhood is lost — the 
bottom falls out. Some cattle-breeders have devised means 
whereby the horns of cows have been made to disappear, the 
nutriment which goes to make horns being turned to the pro- 
duction of milk. When the Church learns that invention, 
changes its horns into milk, converts the strength it wastes in 
controversy into kind and loving deeds, it will be a wonderful 
refreshment to us all. 

This reminds us of a certain animal quite famous in Central 
New York, under the name of " William H. Seward's Bull." 
It appears that the great statesman was often called to act as 
mediator in church difficulties, and upon one such occasion he 
inadvertently directed to a quarreling congregation a letter he 
had written to the tenant of one of his farms. The church 
met, and solemnly opening the letter of advice, read that 
they " must see that the water in the spring be kept pure, 
and take particular care of the old black bull, which had 
become a dangerous creature to all around." They all looked 
blank, for this was very mysterious ; but after praying over it, 
a pious old member arose, and said : " This advice is exactly 
what we need. I have no doubt the Lord directed Mr. Sew- 
ard in writing it. To keep the spring pure, means we must 
not let our love get clogged up ; and to watch the old black 
bull, is to fence in this devil of controversy which has set us 
against each other ! " It was thereupon unanimously resolved 
to stop their discussions ; good-will was at once restored, and 



244 Divisions Hurt our Variety, 

for forty years that church has gone on in prosperity and 
peace. 

As we cannot close better than with prayer, we will bring 
the chapter to an end with the following petition of the holy 
Vinet : 

"Thou eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who art clothed 
with all perfection, and whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, but 
who art full of patience and long-suffering, breathe Thy indulgent Spirit 
into those, who themselves need it so much from Thee ; teach them toler- 
ance to those whom Thou dost tolerate ; give to them the disposition of 
Jesus Christ, who, satisfied with a pure intention and an honest will, waits 
long for what He might demand at once. Teach us, like Him, to look 
upon the heart, upon what is essential, and not upon vain circumstances. 
Enlarge our heart ; tear away the prejudices and pride that have narrowed 
its entrance, and grant that all those whom Thou hast given us as brethren 
may find there an asylum and home : through Jesus Christ our Lord." 



And may all the people say, Amen. 



CHAPTER XI. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR LIBERTY. 

" Awake, awake, put on thy strength, 
Thy beautiful array ; 
The day of freedom dawns at length, 
The Lord's appointed day." 

INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY. 

In the general upset of things, names and labels are disar- 
ranged as badly as they are in town after the college boys 
have been out for a night. Thus, by an odd mischance, those 
witless people who say the Bible was made for a tether, and 
the world had no Maker at all, are styled free thinkers ! 
Whereas, free thought is born of Scripture, and is nursed 
and kept alive by Christianity. The great expounders of 
English liberty were not skeptics, such as Lord Herbert, or 
Hobbes of Malmsbury, but Christians. The most eloquent 
defender of " the liberty of prophesying " was the godly 
Jeremy Taylor; the most powerful advocate of toleration was 
the pious John Locke. 

No sooner was the Bible fairly opened in England than 
independents arose ; who, as Macaulay says : 

" Esteemed themselves nobles by the rig-ht of an earlier creation, and 
priests by the imposition of a mightier hand ; men who prostrated them- 
selves in the dust before their Maker, but set their foot on the neck of the 
king." 

From these men came that triumvirate of New England 
liberty — the free Church, the free School, and the Town meet- 
ing, where each man was trained to think and act for himself. 
John Adams says that neither he nor Franklin started the 
idea of independence, but that he learned it when he taught 
school in Worcester, and boarded around among the Bible- 
reading farmers. And Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that 
he took his first impressions of a pure republic from the sim- 

(M5) 



246 Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 

pie organization of a little Baptist society in the neighborhood 
of his early residence in the State of Virginia. 

Ecclesiastical authority has been a mighty thing in the 
world ; kings have held the stirrups while priests got on the 
horse ; but it all came from the fertile brain of man ; no hint 
in the Bible of anything of the kind. So far from it, that 
upon a certain occasion when the natural love of power 
showed itself among his little flock, Jesus called His disciples 
to Him, and said : 

" Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, 
and they that are great exercise authority upon them ; but it shall not be 
so among you ; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your 
minister, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." 

And upon another occasion. He said : 

"Be ye not called Rabbi ; for one is your Master, even Christ ; and all 
ye are brethren." 

In the Church of Christ, station is service ; he occupies the 
highest office who most subjects himself to the good of all. 
The Church is not without government ; no institution is so 
strictly regulated, but the Regulator's throne is in heaven. 
Christ is Himself the Lawgiver and Law of His people. 
Master, Shepherd, Captain, King, Head, and Lord, all the 
forms, titles, and regalia of control He has retained in His own 
keeping. Like the first Jewish State, the Church is a Theoc- 
racy ; it is governed directly by Christ through the Holy 
Ghost. He has not appointed any deputies or viceroys ; no 
commission from Him has ever been seen entrusting His 
power out of His hands. Our popes and diocesan bishops 
are usurpers ; our councils and assemblies for governing the 
Church are impertinences. The Church is Christ's ; it is His 
spiritual body, and all these attempts to dignify and strengthen 
it by prelatical and canonical rule, are as superfluous as the 
mock purple they put upon Him in the Hall of Pilate, and 
wounding as the crown of thorns. 

Looking into Scripture, we find the only Church preroga- 
tives that Christ has delegated to us are the appointment of 
our ministering servants, and the exercise of discipline. These 
functions are committed to each church, and each church con- 
sists of the believers residing in any particular locality. Be- 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 247 

yond the church of the place there is no higher till we get to 
*' the general assembly and church of the first-born which are 
written in heaven." No word of Scripture allows any church 
authority ever to cross two corporation lines. 

The powers of this local church over its members are most 
carefully defined and guarded. It may choose its ministers, 
and may cast out those who are openly vicious, those who try 
to make divisions, and those who deny the Gospel. Beyond 
this, it must let its members alone, each must grow up in his 
own way. Florists sometimes get a most beautiful array of 
flowers, by taking an elder stalk, punching out the pith, plac- 
ing within the stalk a variety of seeds, and then burying the 
stalk ; the seeds grow and blossom out into various kinds of 
flowers, all springing apparently from one root. The local 
church is an arrangement like that. God puts in the one soil, 
in the bounds of the same church, a large variety of Christian 
hearts, and as they grow in grace they will work out each 
its own appropriate and beautiful form ; all we have to do 
is to let them be free, and not put any molds on to their 
leaves or flowers or fruit. The injunction not to meddle with 
God's floriculture is most particular. 

" Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not ; and let not him 
which eateth not judge him that eateth-; for God hath received him. Who 
art thou that judgest another man's servant ? to his own master he stand- 
€th or falleth. But why dost thou judge thy brother ? or why dost thou 
set at naught thy brother ? for we shall all stand before the judgment-seat 

of Christ Let us not, therefore, judge one another any more ; but 

judge this, rather, that no man put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall 
in his brother's way." — ROM. xiv. 3, 4, 10, 13. 



Men are not responsible to each other for their religious 
beliefs and usages, because there already exists a responsi- 
bility so complete that there is no need of any other. Every 
man must answer to God. And this brings us to the very 
corner-stone of the matter. 

When they set about uniting the cities of Nev/ York and 
Brooklyn with a bridge, they first got down below the waters, 
and below the slime, and below the clay, till they struck the 
rock, and there they put the corner-stone. When Christians 
really undertake the work of union, they will get down past 
all traditions and creeds and begin on the rock of God's eter- 



248 Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 

nal word, and the corner-stone of it all will be — Man's per- 
sonal responsibility to God. 

The old heathen governments were built on the theory that 
the clan or class was the unit of humanity ; that the individ- 
ual was merely a part of his tribe or nation. Christianity 
introduced the new principle that the individual is the unit 
of humanity, and that in hiai center the fundamental rights. 
According to the New Testament, each man is a kingdom, an 
empire, and while he may delegate some of his social rights to 
others for the public good, his religious rights are inalienable. 
No man can shift on to another, or assign to another the rule 
of his conscience or the reading of the Bible, for at the judg- 
ment day he must answer for himself. " Every one of us 
shall give account of himself to God" (Romans xiv. 12). If 
each man is accountable for himself, then each man must read 
and decide for himself. Personal responsibility necessitates 
personal liberty. 

Accordingly, the Bible was written to no organization or 
priesthood, but to the individual soul. Addressing himself 
to each human being, the inspired penman says : '' These are 
written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the 
Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life through 
His name." So, when Christ stood before the multitude. He 
treated the Divine Word as a message to each one of them. 
To all He gave the command, " Search the Scriptures." On 
disputed points He said, not '^ Hear the Church," or " Hear 
the Councils," but "What saith the Scripture?" ''What is 
written in the Law — how readest thou ? " And this duty He 
based on the fundamental fact, " He that rejecteth me and 
receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him ; the 
word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the 
last day " (John xii. 48). 

Each one being amenable for himself, each one must have 
the facilities for understanding the Scripture. Accordingly, 
we find that the first disciples were told to tarry at Jerusalem 
until they received this help from on high. They did wait, 
and on the Day of Pentecost they received it. " They were 
all filled with the Holy Ghost." This help is given to every 
believer, for St. Paul says, " The manifestation of the Spirit 
is given to every man to profit withal ;" and enumerating the 
several gifts, he says : '' All these worketh the self-same Spirit, 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 249 

dividing to every man severally as he will." Each Christian 
is, therefore, possessed of both the right and the capacity for 
reading the Bible for himself. 

Christian liberty is thus not the liberty of the Church, or of 
any division or department of the Church, but the liberty of 
the man. It is an absolute liberty. The soul has no master 
but its God. Any religious authority in the universe that 
steps in between it and its Maker is a usurpation. It is a 
liberty not transferable. The believer must exercise it ; he 
cannot pass it over to any man or body of men. Unmistak- 
able is the command, " Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty 
wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled 
again in the yoke of bondage." The believer cannot shield 
himself behind any denomination, creed, or ecclesiastic. 
Preachers may expound the Word, but the decision, the final 
interpretation of it rests with the Christian's own soul. In 
its constitution, therefore, the Church is, and can never be 
anything but a spiritual brotherhood, a voluntary company 
of independent souls. 

THIS LIBERTY LOST. 

This liberty was never revoked by the Head of the Church. 
Its charter has never been annulled. It was gradually filched 
away. The beginning of the spoliation is thus described by 
the Rev. J. W. Brier, Sr., who, in recounting the decline of 
the early Christians, says : 

" The religious services of the Lord's Day were opened by one of the 
elders, who read the Scriptures and commented, and then prayed. After 
this a psalm or spiritual song was generally sung. The after-exercises 
consisted in singing, exhortation, prophesying, praying, and in relating 
Christian experience. In these exercises all took part as they were moved 
and inspired by the Holy Ghost. In this way the members ' edified one 
another in love,' and thus improved their gifts for usefulness. Soon the 
more gifted of the pastors assumed the place of public teachers, or ex- 
pounders of the Word, and. used the hours for service very much as they 
are now used. They did this as a more suitable way of edifying the body, 
or at least displaying their own talents. The result was what might be 
expected. The mass of the members of all the churches sunk down into 
the condition of hearers only ; hence the gifts, being no longer used, ceased 
to exist ; consequently, the spiritual power and ability of laymen ceased to 
fill beholders with wonder and astonishment. This was clearly a departure 
from the regime of the Holy Ghost, and proved most disastrous to the 
spiritual interests of the Church. Priestly usurpation was the final result ; 



250 Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 

for it came to this, that ministers alone had not only the right to administer 
the sacraments, but to expound the Word. The padlock of prohibition 
was placed on the lips of the laymen, and they were taught in all submis- 
sion to obey and listen." 

The local church being thus under the foot of the priest, 
it was but a step for the ambitious master of a large city- 
church to extend his rule over the smaller churches of the 
vicinity. Thus came the diocesan bishops. The same love 
of power working among these bishops culminated in a Pope. 
The monstrous despotism of Rome grew up from the forsak- 
ing of his rights and gifts by the individual believer. The 
essential wrong of Popery is seen in the following decree by 
the Roman Catholic Council of Trent : 

" To restrain petulant minds, the Council decrees that no one trusting to 
his own skill in matters of faith and morals shall wrest the Sacred Scrip- 
tures to his own sense, contrary to that sense which our holy mother, the 
Church, holds, whose province it is to decide upon the true sense and inter- 
pretation of the Scriptures ; nor shall any one dare to interpret them con- 
trary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers." 

But the turn came. Alone, in the Dark Ages, John Huss 
stood up and said, that while he believed the Romish doc- 
trines, he believed them not because the Church taught them, 
but because he thought the Bible taught them. This position 
he would not recant, and for it he was burned. John Huss 
was the first martyr of the Reformation, and he died for Hb- 
erty of conscience. 

Here Luther took his stand. " You are not to question 
the decisions of the Councils," said the Papal spokesman at 
the Diet of Worms. " I cannot," replied Luther, " submit 
my faith either to the Pope or to the Councils. If I am not 
convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, 
and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection 
to God's Word, I neither can nor will retract anything, for it 
cannot be right for a Christian to speak against his con- 
science." Then turning a look on that august assembly which 
held his life in its hands, he added : '' I stand here, and can 
say no more. God help me. Amen." 

From these noble utterances, however, it must not be sup- 
posed that the Reformers had a perfect understanding of 
Christian liberty. Far from it. They only advanced one 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 251 

step. Religious, just as civil liberty, moves forward, age by 
age, and step by step, as through struggle and sacrifice it 
wrests some single principle from the grasp of the oppressor. 
The Reformers broke from the rule of the Pope ; they still 
held to the rule of the Nation. 

The idea of the Reformers was a universal Church composed 
of separate national churches. The national churches were 
to be each independent, but were to commune with one an- 
other in faith and love. Thus it was that Calvin subscribed 
to the Lutheran Confession ; it was the Church of Switzer- 
land acknowledging the Church of Germany. Thus it was 
that Knox from Scotland officiated for a time in the Church 
of England ; and that Episcopalians from England, and Pres- 
byterians from France and Switzerland, met as associates in 
the Synod of Dort. But this religious liberty for the nation was 
not to extend to churches or individuals inside of it. While the 
Protestant national establishments were tolerating each other 
in admirable spirit, they were at the very same time persecut- 
ing all within their territories who would not adopt their laws 
and creeds. 

This absurd state of things arose from their idea that the 
care of religion belonged to the Christian magistrate. The 
Popish clergy had said that the State had no power over the 
priest, and this had reduced civil rulers to mere tools for 
doing the will of the ecclesiastics. To free their rulers from 
this degradation, the Reformers went to the other extreme, 
and maintained that to the magistrate, or king, belonged the 
power to uphold and reform religion within his jurisdiction. 
For example, the Reformers in the latter Confession of Hel- 
vetia, say : " We teach that the care of religion does chiefly 
appertain to the holy magistrate. Let him, therefore, hold 
the Word of God in his hands, and look that nothing be 
taught contrary thereunto. Let him suppress stubborn here- 
tics." In the Confession of Bohemia, they declare : " The 
magistrate by his authority should set forth the truth of the 
holy Gospel." In that of France, they say : " The sword is 
delivered into the hands of the magistrates, that offenses may 
be repressed, not only those which are committed against the 
second table, but also against the first." And in that of Scot- 
land, they affirm : " To kings, princes, rulers, and magistrates 
chiefly, and most principally, the conversation and purgation 



252 Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 

of religion appertaineth, and they are to suppress idolatry and 
superstition." Many such declarations may be found in the 
'' Harmony of Protestant Confessions." Every supreme magis- 
trate, according to them, was to reform his own national 
Church, support and preserve it, while by his authority he 
also suppressed heresy and superstition. Thus the title, '' De- 
fender of the Faith," was considered in those days a most 
appropriate designation for royalty. 

This explains those proceedings which appear so inconsist- 
ent to us now — Cranmer and Ridley treating with marked 
cordiality the reformers of the Continent, and then turning 
to their own Church, and urging the imprisonment of their 
neighbor. Hooper, because of a trifling disagreement as to 
vestments. John Calvin, fraternizing with the Churches of 
England and Germany, though they differed with him on a 
thousand points, but so fierce against dissent in his own 
country as to advise the burning of Servetus for heresy. And 
good Bishop Hall, writing a treatise on Moderation, in the gen- 
eral, but showing what he thought of moderation in the par- 
ticular, by saying: "Master Calvin did well approve himself 
to God's Church in bringing Servetus to the stake at Geneva." 
The misfortune of John Bunyan was that he was a home dis- 
senter. At the very time the English Church was sending 
him to prison for ''devilishly abstaining from church and 
upholding unlawful meetings, to the disturbance of this king- 
dom, contrary to the laws of our sovereign lord, the king" — 
it would have treated him like a prince, if like Bucer, or Peter 
Martyr, he had come among them from a foreign church. 

Our own country has seen the working of this idea. The 
English colonial governors of New York felt themselves in duty 
bound to keep religion straight within their borders. So we 
find in 1672 George Fox, the Quaker, passing around New 
York by water, not daring to set foot upon the island. In 
1707 we find the Rev. Francis McKemie, the first Presby- 
terian preacher sent to the colony, arrested by the sheriff and 
thrown into prison for preaching contrary to the views of 
Lord Cornbury, the royal governor. The first Baptist preacher, 
Mr. Wickenden, in 1709, was imprisoned three months for 
the same offense ; and the first immersions on Manhattan Isl- 
and were performed at night. And as to the Papists, there Avas 
a law to hang every Romish priest who came into the colony. 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 253 

Our principal sects in this country were all imported from 
Europe, and they came from these national churches set up by 
the Reformers. The Presbyterians from the national churches 
of Switzerland and Scotland, the Episcopalians from the na- 
tional church of England, the Lutherans from the national 
church of Germany, and the Reformed Dutch from the na- 
tional church of Holland ; and they all brought with them 
the idea that the believing soul should be subject to the 
higher ecclesiastical authorities. 

But the Reformers failed in their scheme. They were not 
permitted to form their universal Church in this way. It was 
their earnest desire to have a general council of these national 
churches, and fix upon a common creed for all Protestants. 
That council never met, that creed was never made. Dissent- 
ers sprung up everywhere. Neither Laud with his royal 
edicts, nor the Covenanters with their solemn oaths could 
put down freedom of thought. Luther and Calvin and Cran- 
mer and Knox were shining lights, but as they had learned 
from the Bible to think for themselves, why should not others 
from the same book think for //^^;;^-selves ? Was the great 
Pope over all the world only to be exchanged for a little pope 
over each country? No. The Christian mind, in its newly- 
discovered right of thinking for itself, rebelled against these 
national establishments. The Congregationalists, Baptists, and 
Methodists broke away from them ; and what ! One step for- 
ward. One step only, for even these dissenters did not gen- 
erally grasp the full idea of soul-liberty. They freed them- 
selves from the yoke of the nation, and advanced to the 
position now held by almost all American Christians — the 
freedom of the Sect. A man may join what sect he pleases, 
but he must be sure and conform to that. 

THE SECTARIAN YOKE. 
Sectarian power is as real a violation of Christian liberty as 
Popery, or national establishments. Said the Baptist Unioit : 

" What are associations, as usually administered, but mammoth, man- 
made churches, lording it over the churches made by Christ ? What are 
denominations but great churches, which swallow up the real churches ? 
It has come to this, that the churches of Christ are mere factors of these 
great churches of human creation. The independence of the churches is 
now a mere name, an obsolete affair ; and denominationalism fills the 
throne and holds the reins of power." 



254 Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 

Eminent clergymen often refuse sectarian dictation and 
assert the freedom of conscience ; but they are exceptions. 
To the mass of its members the Sect speaks with authority. 
There is no scarlet robe or triple crown, but there is a power 
which lifts up or casts down, which honors or consigns to 
shame. An impersonal Pope rules supreme — his title, " our 
denomination ; " his decrees, '' our usages." In general, the 
membership look to their sect as Christ's Church ; they know 
no other. Its party conclusions are their principles ; its stand- 
ards their theology. 

And the sect expects its followers to obey ; it expects them 
to do it as their religious duty ; it expects them to hold its 
opinions as higher authority than their own. The Episcopal 
denomination honestly avows this. Its sentiment was once 
expressed by Bishop Whitehouse, in an address to the Illinois 
Convention, in these words : 

" Respect as we may individual conscience, the conscience of the Church 
is holier. Within its own sphere, we may respect the scruples of the former, 
and heed even its fancies in tenderness, as a ministry in illness ; but in our 
corporate trust within the living-, mystical body, the grand pulsations of its 
heart must regulate the beat within our breast, and draw its panting quick- 
ness into unison with the robust steadiness of the Catholic and Apostolic." 

Each sect feels that its denominational utterance should be 
superior to that of the individual. A sect may be started on 
the very principle of soul-liberty, but it inevitably slides into 
this despotism. The Baptists started on that principle, but 
through party necessity they have grown to be one of the 
most arbitrary denominations among us. The Rev. Dr. Jesse 
B. Thomas, one of their leading divines, publicly stated some 
time since, that the intolerance of the majority of Baptists 
toward the open-communion minority, was in its spirit essen- 
tially Popish. Said he : 

" The Papacy regards the Bible as so dark that only priests may read it ; 
the Baptists regard it as so plain that men must be ignorant or dishonest 
who differ from them. They assume to have arrived at the end of knowl- 
edge on the points at issue. This is infallibility." 

It recalls a well-known instance in point. Many of our 
close-communion brethren, when they travel abroad, will taste 
in foreign lands the luxury of communing with their brethren 
of other sects. The editor of a prominent Baptist paper in 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 255 

New England, while in London not long ago, partook of the 
Lord's Supper with Congregationalists and others in this way. 
It was a relief and delight for him to enjoy for a moment his 
Christian freedom. But hardly had he resumed his editorial 
chair on his return before a letter came from another Baptist 
clergyman in distress. This reverend brother was pastor of the 
only evangelical congregation in his village ; about half of his 
people were pedo-baptists, and they had drawn up a protest 
against being excluded from the Lord's table, stating that if 
it was any longer shut against them they would leave and set 
up another church. What should he do? He writes to the 
editor to know. The transaction in London shows what the 
editor's heart would have replied ; but he was in Boston now, 
under command of his sect, and he actually wrote to his dis- 
tressed brother, to keep up the bars and divide his church 
rather than commune with the unimmersed ! 

And here we may throw in the remark, that if there are 
any who especially ought to be free, it is the editors of our 
religious journals ; yet beneath sectarian rule hardly any class 
are kept so strictly under the rod. 

As to liberty among the Presbyterians, we have the testi- 
mony of that highly respected Presbyterian clergyman, Rev. 
Isaac E. Carey, who says : 

" Does it appear that the officers of the Presbyterian Church are pos- 
sessed of liberty, being- required to subscribe to the Westminster standards ? 
The answer is that the act of subscription is their own, and is intelligent 
and free. But do they not allow a human authority to step in between 
their souls and God ? In what, then, does their liberty of conscience con- 
sist ? Only in submitting their minds to another than God ; in permitting 
a human document to come between them and the Word of God ; in 
accepting as practically infallible the standard of the Church ! How does 
this liberty differ from that of the Romish priest in subscribing to Papal 
infallibility ? It may be said that the priest acts freely ; but plainly he sub- 
mits to despotic authority, allowing a usurper to come between his soul 
and God ; and thus by his own act he is in a state of bondage. The only 
liberty he can have in the Church of Rome, is that of voluntarily continu- 
ing in this state of bondage. This only is the Kberty of the officers of the 
Presbyterian Church in that Church ! For they cannot remain in it with- 
out submitting absolutely to church authority, and thus accepting another 
master than God. They are not at liberty to entertain views inconsistent 
with the Presbyterian standards. Even if, after the earnest study of the 
Bible they should, from conscientious convictions, adopt such views, the 
Presbyterian Church is no longer a home for them. If not willing to re- 
nounce their liberty, they must leave the Church, and they must leave it 



256 Divisions Httrt our Liberty. 

just for the sake of liberty of conscience, and for no other reason. The 
Presbyterian Church respects a man's hberty of conscience only as long 
as his conscience acknowledges the supremacy of the Presbyterian Church ; 
the moment it revolts, he must be sent adrift. He may be devoted and 
Christ-like ; but though accepting the Bible as the inspired Word of God, 
and though loyal to the Master, he can remain in the Presbyterian Church 
only as long as he submits to church authority. Is it not clear, then, that 
he can be a Presbyterian only on condition of accepting another master 
than Christ ? He can, of course, withdraw if he finds his position uncom- 
fortable, but this is only saying that he must go out of the Church for a lib- 
erty which he cannot enjoy within it. Where, then, is the essential differ- 
ence between the attitude of the Church of Rome in relation to liberty 
of conscience and that of the Presbyterian Church } The same is true of 
the other sectarian organizations. Ministers of the Methodist, Baptist, and 
Episcopal Churches can retain their connection only by submitting to church 
authority. Thus sect must override liberty for the sake of sect." 

SECTARIAN LAWS. 

If sects exist at all, they must make laws to protect them- 
selves ; to keep their organization from going to pieces. This 
necessity shows their sinfulness ; for we have no right to make 
laws for Christ's Church. Its only law is His will, expressed 
in His Word ; and each member must interpret that Word 
from the light given him by the Holy Spirit. 

At every step in His ministry Jesus was opposed by secta- 
rian laws ; He must not preach this, for it was against the 
authorized interpretation ; He must not heal that man on the 
Sabbath-day, for it violated a canon. When Jesus called Laza- 
rus into life. He commanded the grave-clothes to be taken 
from him that he might have liberty in life. So when He 
raised up His Church from the Jewish sepulchre. He ordered 
off these ecclesiastical trammels, fit only for a corpse. 

Accordingly, Jesus has His Word plainly written ; directs 
it to be given to every soul ; and then declares that this 
Scripture given by inspiration of God, " is profitable for doc- 
trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- 
ness," and that from its pages " the man of God may be per- 
fect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." If that 
means anything, it means that the Holy Bible is the sufficient 
expression of the Saviour's will ; that it contains all the laws 
He meant His Church to have ; that it has complete and 
ample directions for every Christian man. That declaration 
of Scripture makes every enactment of a sect superfluous and 



Divisions Htcrt our Liberty. 257 

tyrannical, proves it to be unconstitutional from the enacting 
clause. The numbers engaged in such usurpation make no 
difference. In Christ's Church the multitude has no right to 
dictate to the individual believer ; they are each and all falli- 
ble, and forbidden to assume any such authority. 

The penalties attached to these laws prove them violations 
of Christian liberty. Every believer has the right to adopt 
the opinions he deems Scriptural, and to modify and change 
them at any time, according as he gets new light. The sect 
cannot allow this liberty ; it must keep to the opinions on 
which it is based, or it will fall. Before one joins, he is free 
to choose, of course, but once in the ranks, he is saddled with 
the duty of defense ; he must stand by his colors ; to question 
them is disloyal. Yet in nine cases out of ten all the chance 
one has to study his sect is after he is in it. A boy seeking 
Christ is led into a denomination ; years pass, he may become 
a minister before he really understands the banner that is over 
him ; then, when his eyes open, he wakes up to the fact that 
any change in his opinions will affect his ministerial standing 
and his daily bread. 

We call this a land of religious liberty, and boast that one 
is free to profess whatever faith he pleases. So he may, tak- 
ing the consequences. Under the blessed reign of Victoria, a 
Hindoo has liberty to change his faith whenever he will; 
only, let him do it, and from that moment he is an outcast. 
His friends do not know him ; to his relations he is dead, and 
they go through the funeral rites as if he were no more in 
this world. The pastor of the native Christian Church in 
Bombay has thus been buried by his own family. So in these 
United States, a man is free to decide against his denornina- 
tion, and he will not be sent to jail for it, but there are other 
penalties than going to jail. The sect holds power over a 
man's comfort and profit and good name and influence, and it 
can fasten upon him in that direction if he changes his views ; 
the table of the Lord may be denied him ; fellowship and 
confidence may be refused him ; his wife and children and 
neighbors may be taught to look on him as cast out ; and 
many a man who would have stood firm at the stake 
with the early martyrs, has wilted utterly down under this 
social persecution. No man is good or great enough to be 
exempt from these penalties. George H. Stuart, one of the 

17 



258 Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 

noblest Christian workers of the day, was disciplined and 
nearly expelled by his sect for atrociously singing hymns, 
instead of confining himself according to rule to Rouse's ver- 
sion of the psalms. 

It is a queer kind of freedom we enjoy under shadow of 
such punishment as this. Frederick the Great was very fond 
of discussion, but as he usually closed the debate by giving 
his opponent a kick, the courtiers were rather shy of entering 
the arena with him. Being disposed one day for argument, 
he demanded of one of his suite why he did not speak out 
his mind? ''Your Majesty," was the reply, '' it is impossi-^ 
ble to speak out one's mind before a monarch who wears such 
very thick boots!" And thousands of good Christian people 
among us are kept from the temptation of saying what they 
think by a wholesome sense of the denominational boots. 

MINISTERIAL PENALTIES. 

Let us consider these penalties as they apply especially to 
our ministers. 

First, we may mention that negative punishment which 
every sect inflicts upon its ministers who are lax in their 
party zeal — the punishment of neglect. An article we take 
from the New York Evangelist explains this perfectly : 

" Recently three ministers met in a pastor's study, and, of course, the 
conversation turned upon the condition and demands of the neighboring 
churches. There was in one a vacant pulpit to be filled. The name of a 
minister had been suggested for the place. ' Let us look at the record of 
his past year's work,' said one, taking up the invaluable Minutes of the 
General Assembly. ' He is in a good, strong church,' he continued. ' and 
a goodly accession has been made to it during the year, both by profession 
and letter ; but, tut, not a dollar has been given to any of our Church causes, 
with a single exception. That is enough to know about him ; he will not 
suit. Granted that special reasons may have existed for the remissness, 
such as church building, or an embarrassing debt, he will not suit.' " 

In other words, this man had been successful in every proper 
work of the ministry ; he had done well in the pastorate of a 
strong church ; goodly accessions had come to his fold ; he 
was evidently a man of piety and pulpit ability; he had done 
his duty also in some building enterprise, and had struggled 
against an embarrassing debt, but when it came to honoring 
or relieving him by a call to another field, it counted for noth- 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 259 

ing because he had not been zealous for his sect. " Take heed 
to the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you over- 
seers," says the Scripture. " Not enough," says the sect. 
*' Work for your party, or we will not recognize you." This 
is the sectarian whip, which many an excellent clergyman has 
felt all his life. However true he may be to the souls given 
him in charge, if he does not pay the taxes of the denomina- 
tional boards, he is carefully cut. 

But if, instead of merely losing interest in the peculiar opin- 
ions of his sect, a minister discovers them to be actually wrong, 
what then? A prominent Baptist clergyman once told us 
privately that his heart revolted at close-communion, his love 
went out toward all God's people. " Why not come out and 
say so?" we inquired. *' I should be ostracised at once," 
was the reply ; " I would lose my pulpit within a week." The 
Genessee Baptist Pastors' Conference once invited the Rev. 
R. C. Palmer to read an essay before them, and discovering a 
leaning toward open-communion, they passed a resolution 
pronouncing him unworthy of a place in the Baptist ministry, 
and called upon his church to dismiss him from his pastorate ; 
and his church thereupon gave him notice to quit. 

Bad in the Baptists, you say. It was. But look on the 
other hand. One of the best men who ever lived in Massa- 
chusetts, was Henry Dunster, the second President of Harvard 
College. The institution was poor then, and Dunster was not 
only president, but treasurer, clerk, steward, traveling agent — 
factotum. He collected his own salary, and begged money 
for the college building and the president's house. He was 
highly esteemed, and laid the foundation of Harvard's pros- 
perity. But one Sabbath morning, preaching in the Congre- 
gational meeting-house, he said he could not see Scriptural 
authority for infant baptism ! At once he was requested to 
resign. He informed the ecclesiastical court that he had laid 
in provision for the winter, that his wife was sick, and that it 
would be a calamity for him to at once remove, as he said, 
'' from the house I have builded on very damageful conditions 
to myself, out of love for the college." But he had to go ; 
and not until after his death, five years later, was the pitiful 
residue of his salary paid to his family. Precious little 
does Harvard care now for infant baptism or for any baptism 
at all. Let us go to old Cambridge burying-ground and 



26o Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 

stand by the grave of Henry Dunster, and we may see the 
reason why. 

If the sectarian lash is so. powerful among the Baptists and 
Congregationalists, the very champions of individual liberty, 
we may imagine its force among the more solidly organized 
denominations. Attending once a meeting of evangelical 
Episcopal clergymen in the church of the Epiphany. Phila- 
delphia, we found that many were distressed by the sectarian 
laws compelling them to use, without alteration, the exact 
words of the Prayer-book. One venerable minister said : " I 
have never used the words in the Baptismal office, ' Seeing, 
Dearly beloved, that this child is regenerate,' or that expres- 
sion of the Catechism, ' My sponsors in baptism, wherein I 
was made a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of 
heaven,' without wincing, and I always hoped that though I 
had to bear it, my boys would in their time be relieved from 
the burden." There was a common sentiment of oppression, 
and at a subsequent meeting a prominent clergyman ex- 
claimed : " My house shall be called the House of Prayer, 
but ye have made it a den of Popery — Go out, go out ! " 
And yet, when not long after, a break was made in the de- 
nomination, and Bishop Cummins did go out and start a 
Prayer-book without Popery, a public protest was made 
against the movement, signed by the very clergymen who 
had uttered these words. They could not endure the social 
martyrdom of going out of their sect. 

" But," it is said, ^' a minister joins a sect voluntarily, and 
if he cannot conform to its laws, he ought to go out." Yes ; 
but what kind of an organization is it that compels good and 
holy men to violate their conscience or go out ? Has any 
body of men the right to organize religion in that way ? Did 
Jesus authorize such penalties? It is very easy to talk about 
a minister's going out, but it is often the severest punishment 
man can inflict on his fellow-man ; it is a punishment which 
Scripture visits only on those who have become infidel or de- 
praved. How hard it is, may be seen in the fate of those 
devoted ministers who left the Scotch establishment for the 
Free Church. Says Dr. Guthrie : 

" I remember, passing a manse on a moonlight night, with a minister 
who had left it for the cause of truth. No light shone from the house, and 
no smoke arose. Pointing to it in the moonlight, I said : ' Oh, my friend, 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 261 

it was a noble thing to leave that manse ! ' * Ah, yes,' he replied, ' but for 
all that, it was a bitter thing. I shall never forget the night I left that 
house till I am laid in the grave. When I saw my children go forth in the 
gloaming ; when I saw them for the last time leave our own door, and 
when, in the dark, I was left alone, with none but my God ; and when I 
had to take water to quench the fire on my own hearth, and put out the 
candle in my own house, and turn the key against myself and my wife and 
my little. ones, I bless God for the grace that was given me ; but may He, in 
His mercy, grant that such a night I may never again see.' " 



LIBERTY OF PREACHING. 

The Gospel leaves the Christian free not only to think, but 
to speak ; it gives not only liberty of opinion, but liberty of 
preaching. Here also our divisions have come in to deprive 
us of our rights. 

Our sects, like armies, being often required to assail and 
defend, do not favor irregular movements, but only disciplined 
effort, obedient to official command. The more the Papacy 
grew into a solid hierarchy, the stricter it kept the pulpit 
under control. Protestant denominations also tend more and 
more to bring Christian zeal into harness ; and they have 
thereby put the ministry behind so many rails, and hedged in 
their functions so carefully from intrusion, that people have 
come to leave the preaching of the Gospel almost entirely to 
them ; looking on the Church as a machine which they are 
not to meddle with further than to furnish the oil of regular 
payments. 

Two hundred years ago, one John Bunyan, a mender of 
pans and kettles, undertook to preach in England without 
this authorized control. He was put in Bedford jail for it, 
and kept there twelve years. His wife frequently appealed 
to the Judges for his release, and one of these scenes in court 
has been recorded : 

" A woman, clad in a coarse black drcGS, rose from the crowd at the back 
of the room, and passed up the aisle ; directing herself to Lord Chief-Justice 
Hale, she said : 

" ' My lord, I make bold to come again to your lordship to know what 
may be done with my husband.' 

" ' He was lawfully convicted, woman,' interfered one of the judges. He 
was one whom she did not know. Addressing Judge Hale, she replied : 

" ' My lord, it is false ! For when they said to him, " Do you confess the 
indictment ? " he said only this : that he had been at several meetings, 



262 Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 

both where there was preaching the Word and prayer, and that they had 
God's presence among them.' 

" * He is a pestile^tt fellow, my lord. There is not such a fellow in the 
country ! ' exclaimed Chester, turning lo Judge Hale. 

" * Will your husband leave off preaching, woman ? If he will do so, 
send for him, and let him answer here for himself,' spoke out Judge 
Twisdon. 

"'My lord,' the woman said, 'my husband dares not leave preaching 
as long as he can speak.' 

" ' See here ! see here ! ' vociferated Twisdon, rising from his seat, and 
striking the bench with his clenched fist ; ' why should we talk any more 
about such a fellow } Must he do what he lists ? He is a breaker of the 
peace.' 

" The woman noticed him not. Keeping her eyes steadily fixed upon 
Judge Hale, she said : 

" ' My husband desires to live peaceably and to follow his calling, that 
his family may be maintained. Moreover, my lord, I have four small chil- 
dren that cannot help themselves, and one of them is blind.' 

" ' What is his calling ? ' asked Judge Hale of her. 

" ' A tinker, my lord, a tinker,' answered some one standing by. 

" ' Yes, my lord, and because he is a tinker and a poor man, he is de- 
spised and cannot have justice.' 

" Chester, highly offended, exclaimed : 

" ' This man will preach, my lord, and do what he pleases.' 

" ' He preaches nothing but the Word of God,' spoke out the wife. 

" * He preach the Word of God ! ' repeated Twisdon, with a bitter 



The jail part of the above business is over now, fortunately, 
but the sneer remains to this day. Tinker ministrations do 
not stand in much repute, and thousands hold that all preach- 
ing should be under charge of some sect. A leading Presby- 
terian paper in Philadelphia recently said : 

" Every one who assumes to proclaim authoritatively the Word of Christ 
to men, should first be a member of some recognized evangelical Church ; 
and secondly, should procure in some way, from the authorities of the 
church to which he is attached, a testimony that he is fitted for the work 
which he proposes to do in the churches. Somehov/ — we do not care much 
how — the idea of responsibility must be connected with the whole system 
of lay evangelization." 

It would hardly be consistent for the Presbyterians to es- 
tablish this rule, as their founder, John Calvin, began to evan- 
gelize before he was a member of any recognized evangelical 
church ; and according to Dr. Philip Schaff there is no evi- 
dence that he ever received human ordination in any form. 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 263 

See how such a rule would have worked with Dwight L. 
Moody. If he had waited till he got testimony from some 
sect that he was fitted for evangelistic work, he would still be 
only a clerk in the Chicago shoe-store. It was all Moody 
could do to be let into the church as a common member. 
When, after his conversion in Boston, he applied for admission 
into the church, the committee found their doctrinal cate- 
chism of him so unsatisfactory, that they kept him waiting 
six months before they let him in, and it is doubtful whether 
he knew much more about the catechism then than at the 
first. After he went to Chicago and began to speak in prayer- 
meetings, he was so uncultured, and made such shocking work 
with grammar, that he was advised to keep still and not annoy 
the other attendants. Even after he began his famous Sun- 
day-school for the young Arabs of Chicago, and had gathered 
them in by filling his pockets with maple-sugar, not a denomi- 
nation there would have recommended him as fit for an evan- 
gelist. A Mr. Reynolds, who visited Mr. Moody at this time, 
describes him thus : 

" The first meeting I ever saw him at, was in a rickety old shanty that 
had been abandoned by a rum-seller. Mr. Moody had got the place to hold 
a meeting in. I went there, and the first thing I saw was a man standing 
up with some tallow candles around him,_ holding a negro boy, and trying 
to read to him the story of the Prodigal Son. A great many of the words 
he could not make out and had to skip, I thought that if the Lord could 
ever use such an instrument as that for His glory, it would astonish me. 
After the meeting was over, Mr. Moody said to me : ' Reynolds, I have only 
one talent ; I have no education, but I love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I 
want to do something for Him, and I want you to pray for me.' " 

The only official recognition that this evangelist received in 
his early days, was his title of " Crazy Moody ; " and the only 
man who gave him a testimony of fitness to proclaim the Word 
of Christ, was John V. Farwell, the merchant. 

Upon examining the Bible, we find that the propagation 
of the Truth was not left to any class of men or to any super- 
vision by men whatever. In all ages we find that God called 
those whom it pleased Him to call, and made use of any sort 
of men, and used them in His own way. For the first twenty- 
five hundred years there was no special ministry set apart. 
There was a church and Sabbaths and sacrifices and prayers, 
all conducted by laymen. Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abr^- 



264 Divisions Htcrt our Liberty, 

ham and Isaac and Jacob were unordained preachers and priests 
of religion. And after a regular priesthood was established, 
when Eldad and Medad began preaching in the camp out of 
the usual order, Moses, instead of rebuking them, exclaimed : 
" Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and 
that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them ! " The Jew- 
ish priesthood was divinely appointed, yet how few priests ever 
led in any effort to revive or extend the worship of God.' 
Joshua and David and Josiah and Hezekiah and Daniel were 
all laymen, and so probably were Elijah and Elisha. 

Coming to the New Testament, we find that when the dis- 
ciples would have forbidden one who was casting out devils in 
Jesus' name without a special license, the Saviour said : " For- 
bid him not, for he that is not against us is for us." While 
the High-Priest, with the whole Sanhedrim, sought the life of 
Jesus, a layman, Nicodemus, spoke in His behalf; when every 
apostle had fled, women stood by His cross, and Joseph of 
Arimathea gave Him a burial-place. 

Christianity is distinct from other religions in the fact that 
all its disciples are priests.- St. Peter addressing, ^' You who 
believe," says — '' Ye are a royal priesthood ; . . . . that ye 
should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you 
out of darkness into His marvelous light." It had been 
prophesied of the Gospel period — " I will pour out my spirit 
upon all flesh ; " accordingly, when the first Christians were 
driven from Jerusalem by persecution, they all went every- 
where preaching the Word. We are told that some of 
them — ^' men of Cyprus and Cyrene, came to Antioch and 
spake unto the Grecians there of the Lord Jesus." It is not 
said that these nameless and obscure men were ordained, but 
it is said : " The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great 
number believed and turned to the Lord." The epistles 
abound with appeals to all Christians, to " hold forth the 
Word of Life," and to exhort and edify one another. A 
physician, Luke, was not only an evangelist, but a writer of 
one of the gospels ; and the Bible closes with an appeal to all 
who hear the Gospel to work in preaching it — " And the Spirit 
and the Bride say, Come : and let him that hcareth, say 
Come." 

Ordination was used by the apostles in appointing to offi- 
cial station and in conferring miraculous gifts, but a Christian 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 265 

did not have to be ordained before he could preach. There is 
no evidence that Stephen or Philip were ever ordained to 
preach, and St. Paul says repeatedly that he derived his au- 
thority as a preacher from God, and not from man. St. Hilary 
and Tertullian inform us that at the first, laymen had the right 
to teach and evangelize in the churches. Bloomfield, in com- 
menting on the Greek Testament, says that in apostolic times 
the distinction between the clergy and laity did not exist as it 
does now. And until the Papacy came in, monopolizing all 
religious functions for the priesthood, it was common for those 
leading the congregation to call on laymen to rise and speak 
in the name of the Lord. 

It is good to have a ministry, and an educated ministry, and 
to honor and uphold them in their appointed work, but the 
idea that they are to engross the duty of preaching, or that 
no one can preach without their authority, is all a mistake. 
Every man who is converted is thereby ordained from heaven 
to preach the Gospel ; and he is no more to wait the sanction 
of the clergy before he begins to preach, than before he begins 
to pray. In the Book of Revelation, St. John says that he 
heard the number of the servants of God that were sealed for 
glory. From each tribe were sealed 12,000, and — ''Of the 
tribe of Levi, were sealed 12,000." That is, as large a propor- 
tion of ministers will be saved as of other tribes of professors 
— and no more. 

The Rev. Phillips Brooks says he has become forcibly im- 
pressed with the fact that the Church of Christ is not the 
clergy, and that laymen are as fully bound to preach the Gos- 
pel as clergymen. When all become forcibly impressed with 
that fact, the Church will wake up to great things. Liberate 
preaching from sectarian control ; give it free range ; let every 
converted heart cultivate its gifts and tell what it burns to 
tell, and a million mouths that are padlocked now, will be 
opened for the Lord. We rely too much on eloquence and 
learning and great sermons. These huge columbiads do very 
little execution in proportion to what ought to be done. Sin- 
ners are not afraid of big sermons ; but the sermons that are 
delivered at the work-bench and on the street ; the sermons 
that leap from eye to eye, and from heart to heart, where one 
man is the minister and one man the congregation — they are 
the sermons the devil fears. 



266 Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 

Abandon the idea that preaching must be under the control 
of a separate class, and the Church will become full of men like 
Harlan Page, the house-joiner, who being converted, spent his 
life in warning sinners from the wrath to come. Not a man 
did he meet, not a letter did he write, but something was said 
for Christ, and around him were always people inquiring what 
they must do to be saved. 

It will be full of men like Deacon Lawrence, of Chicago, 
who was unhappy if a week passed without souls being con- 
verted in his Sunday-school. " What is the philosophy of your 
teaching? " some one asked him : 

" Philosophy ? What is that ? Oh, you mean how I do it. Well ; as 
soon as one lesson is through I read over the next, and pray over it ; and 
then read it again and pray over it ; and then I think about it and pray 
about it ; and then I pray over it some more, and by the end of the week I 
get so that I must teach that lesson or I shall die." 

It will abound with women like Lady Huntington, who 
turned her mansion in London into a business office for 
Christ, and who went to the fashionable watering-places to 
speak to the thoughtless crowds there about their souls. And 
like Mrs. Bartlett, of Mr. Spurgeon's Sunday-school, who, 
without being a profound scholar or remarkably able in any 
way, proved one of the most successful preachers of modern 
times. She plead with and prayed personally for each single 
heart committed to her, and of the multitude that thronged 
her great class-room, over a thousand converts joined the 
Tabernacle Church, besides many who joined elsewhere. 

We have heard men talk of what the sects do for the 
preaching of the Gospel. Let them disband and leave our min- 
isters and people free, and there will be a thousand preaching 
the Gospel where now there is one. 

LIBERTY OF ENTERPRISE. 

The sects wish everything done by organized societies and 
through authorized channels, for that is the only way they can 
remain secure ; but this subordination to human rule works 
bad with the Church, which is a spiritual body actuated by the 
will of God. God does not deal with corporations or synods, 
but with each soul ; and the greatest effect is produced when 
each soul is untrammeled to work directly from Him. Secta- 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 267 

rian drill, repressing all eccentric movements, tends to merge 
our individuality in the party, and take away our feeling of 
personal responsibility ; but this individuality is the very 
life and growth of the Church. Says the Rev. Horatius 
Bonar, D.D. : 

" It is not large associations, wealthy societies, or well-knit combinations, 
with the vast machinery which these can call into play, that have wrought 
great things for the Church of God ; it is individual men, bringing to bear 
upon every one around them the power of that special gift with which 
God has endowed them." 

The Bible is a record of individual men who did as God 
told them — Noah and Abraham and Moses and Joshua and 
Gideon and David and Daniel. The Book of Acts is an ac- 
count of the individual labors of Stephen and Philip and 
Peter and Paul — men who went out under no human au- 
thority or oversight, belonging to Christ alone, and saying 
with Paul : " I can do all things through Christ that strength- 
eneth me." 

Sects are necessarily conservative ; they have wealth, and 
they must keep it ; they have fixed creeds and rules of action, 
and they must stand by them. This interferes w4th two things 
upon which the health and vitality of the Church depend — 
Reform and Progress. 

Reform. The sects being human organizations, are con- 
stantly degenerating. That eminent Presbyterian clergyman. 
Dr. James W. Alexander, said : 

" Day by day do I Ouakerize about these things, priesthood, parapherna- 
lia, pomps. But riches beget ceremony, as surely as dung begets weeds 
and blue flowers among the wheat. Would the apostles know their own 
children ? I sometimes think, with Arnold, that Christ will throw all our 
existing church forms into the crucible, to produce a new form out of the 
molten mass." 

The Church, therefore, like each Christian, can only keep 
pure by being in a perpetual state of reformation. But with 
sects this is impossible, for every dollar they own, and every 
law they have bound themselves in, keep them from change. 
Thus it has happened that every reformation in the Church 
has come from without its organized sects — has begun down 
among the common masses and worked up. Says Professor 
Seelye : 



268 Divisions Hurt our Libe^^ty, 

" AH great movements have sprung from the people, and the impulse has 
been communicated to the leading men from them. There is an inspiration 
in the people, and the leaders draw their strength from that inspiration." 

The English Reformation was begun by those men of the 
people called '^ Gospellers ; " who without human ordination 
or approval preached in the market-places, sold Tyndale's 
Bible at the fairs, and staff in hand, worked their way from 
hamlet to hamlet, rousing the populace to a sense of the 
truth. And the whole Reformation was the work of individ- 
ual men — Luther and Zwingle and Cranmer and Calvin and 
Knox, who rose up at the call of God, and went forward in 
defiance of ecclesiastical control. 

So with Progress. Nothing comes out plainer in human 
experience than that you cannot depend for progress on pro- 
fessionals. Our F.R.S., LL.D.'s speak very learned things, 
but after all, the men who invented our locomotives and 
sewing-machines and printing-presses were not regular scien- 
tists, but common mechanics like George Stephenson and 
Elias Howe and Robert Hoe. Military academies are good 
things, but Von Moltke says that to confine army promotions 
to them would be the ruin of any country. It is well known 
that the abandonment in 1793, by Carnot, the French War 
Minister, of the professional system of officering the army 
and giving any soldier the chance to rise, created those mag- 
nificent fighting machines with which Bonaparte conquered 
Europe, and that adherence to the professional system de- 
stroyed the military power of Germany and Austria. 

There is no question, but with their excellent institutions 
and drill, the sects can produce good functionaries ; and func- 
tionaries are necessary in some positions, and have a work to 
do ; but no greater calamity could befall the Church than 
leaving to these functionaries the direction and control of 
religious activities. Some good people have the idea that 
sects and sectarian officials have hitherto chiefly led in Gospel 
progress; let them study the facts, and they will see that 
scarce any of the noble Christian enterprises that have blessed 
the world have come from them. 

Look at the Bible Society. The first one was started in 
London, in 1780, by a private individual ; so very private that 
nobody now knows his name. It was at the time of the Gor- 
don Riots, and seeing the immorality of the soldiers stationed 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 269 

in Hyde Park, he advertised in the newspapers for a meeting 
to form a society to distribute Bibles among them. He went 
to the hall at the appointed time, and one man was there. 
They two were all the meeting. One proposed a resolution 
to form a Bible Society, the other seconded it, then both 
passed it. Larger meetings followed ; Thornton and other 
good men joined in ; and that was the way the original Bible 
Society began. 

Look at the Sundaj/sc/iool institution. In 1788, one Robert 
Raikes, a printer, was moved by seeing in the streets of 
Gloucester a crowd of wretched, untaught children. As they 
were employed on week days in the pin-factory, he hired four 
women for a shilling a day each, to teach on Sunday all he 
could collect of the " young ragamuffins," as he called them. 
And that was how our Sunday-schools began. 

See the origin of Protestant Missions. Toward the close 
of the last century, a poor Englishman, named Carey, who 
supported his family by making shoes, and also by keeping 
a little school, was led, while teaching geography to the chil- 
dren, to consider the state of the heathen world, and conceived 
the plan of sending them the Gospel. He spoke on the sub- 
ject in a little meeting, and was laughed at as a visionary, 
and as having " heathen on the brain." He went soon after 
to a Baptist theological school to study for the ministry, and 
there again he proposed his scheme ; it was so startling that 
Dr. Ryland, the principal, arose from his seat, and indignantly 
exclaimed : " Sit down, young man ; when God wishes to con- 
vert the heathen. He will do it without your aid or mine ! " 
But some Baptists joined with him at last, and they formed a 
society with a fund of fifty dollars, and Carey went forth to 
India the first Protestant missionary, under the silent indiffer- 
ence of the English Church and the jokes of the Rev. Sidney 
Smith. 

One of the noblest charities in Christendom is the English 
Ragged School system. It has taken thousands of little out- 
casts and helped them up to honorable life. Did it begin in 
the Cathedrals or Seminaries ? Oh, no ! but in another shoe- 
shop. On a back street in Plymouth lived a crippled cobbler, 
who, determined to do some good, undertook to teach the 
little vagabonds of the town while he pegged away at his 
shoes. His teaching was entirely gratuitous and full of hu- 



270 Dzviszo7ts Hurt our Liberty. 

mor, and there were hosts of applicants ; but he took In only 
the poorest and the worst. " It is the little blackguards I want," 
said he ; and he was known to hobble down to the wharf after 
such, and bribe them to his school with roasted potatoes. 
Every day was he seen working away at his bench, and at the 
same time directing the studies of a shop full of these urchins. 
The influence of the man became extraordinary, and when he 
died, New Year's day, 1836, thousands whom he had reclaimed 
from degradation, mourned and even fainted at their loss. 
John Pounds originated the Ragged Schools. 

Passing by the movements for the suppression of the Slave 
trade, by Clarkson and Wilberforce, laymen ; for the amelio- 
ration of Prisoners, by Howard, the philanthropist, and Mrs. 
Fry ; and the Temperance Reform, which the sects are still 
hesitating about ; we come to the — 

Young Mens Christian Associations. In 1844, George Wil- 
liams, a draper's clerk in London, prayed to God to keep him 
and his companions from the temptations of the great city ; 
he asked his employer for the privilege of half an hour each 
day for their religious improvem.ent. It was granted ; a count- 
ing-room was assigned for their use, and they devoted the half 
hour to prayer and reading and edifying conversation. The 
result was excellent ; clerks from other establishments joined 
them, and so this noble enterprise was inaugurated. 

What blessed things are omx Poor Children s Picnic Excur- 
sions ! They began in 1872, when twenty thousand dollars 
were raised, and the Newsboys and Bootblacks of New York 
were invited to a ride on the river and a day in the country, 
with all sorts of amusements and plenty to eat. These excur- 
sions have grown into a permanent institution, and have been 
started in other cities. The amount of happiness they afford 
is incalculable. When the tickets come, the gamins' delight, 
beyond all words, is expressed in shouts and clappings and 
somersaults of joy. To pass one of these barges on the 
bay, both decks loaded with dancing, singing, rollicking chil- 
dren, is a sight to see. Whose idea was it ? It originated in 
the office of the New York Times. 

But in the tenements are many suffering children too weak 
and diseased for such picnics. Up the stifling courts and up 
the filthy stairs and in the forlorn chambers they lie, poorly 
attended at the best, and often hardly cared for at all. An 



Divisions Hurt our Liberty. 271 

excursion company was organized for these poor creatures. 
A barge was provided with nurses and lounges and new dolls 
and gentle music. Oh, it was a heavenly conception ! The 
Gospels are brimful of it. Pale faces and sunken eyes brighten 
up weeks ahead in anticipation of such a celestial treat. Surely 
this mission, so like that of Jesus, started in the Church. 
Alas ! no. The sects, busy with their rivalries, never heard 
of it till it was reported in the daily papers. It emanated 
from the establishment of the New York Herald I 

So conservative indeed are the sects, that new religious 
projects often find them in direct opposition. The Christian 
Statesman, organ of those laboring to Christianize our govern- 
ment, says : 

" The movement against political atheism and corruption, and the agita- 
tion for a Religious Amendment to the Constitution, has taken deep root 
in the public mind, while it has hardly reached the sects, and will be suc- 
cessful in the nation before it has converted the Church. Our opportunity 
must be sought through voluntary associations, through the press, on the 
platform, in social intercourse ; but not through the institutions of the 
Church ; and a brazen wall of denominational prejudice is one of the great- 
est hindrances to the progress of our cause." 

These facts, showing that God chooses His instruments 
and begins His great designs without reference to human 
systems or societies, teach us that this sectarian pressure 
to regulate and supervise our activities, can only end in our 
bondage and hurt — that Christian liberty is essential to Chris- 
tian progress. They teach us that the only way the Church 
can get the good of all her energies, is by leaving each disciple 
free to work out the impulse God has put in him, and to work 
it out in his own fashion — feeling that as an independent soul, 
that must render an independent account, God has given him 
his own task to perform, which no other human being can 
perform for him, and which no other human being may even 
understand. 

GOSPEL LIBERTY SAFE. 

The usual objection to Gospel liberty is that it is tinsafe. 
It is touching to see how anxious men are .lest the free grace 
and franchises of Scripture should lead to abuse. We may 
dismiss our fears. The Lord can keep His Zion. At least, 



272 Divisions Hurt omi^ Liberty, 

if He cannot, He can get better help than ours. If the 
Church is not safe with Christ as its Lawgiver, and the Bible 
as its law, man's wisdom is not going to save it. Roman 
Catholics decry the doctrine of Justification by faith as lead- 
ing to looseness, yet the nations who hold it are the very ones 
noted for their morality. Pope Innocent III. anathematized 
the English Magna Charta as tending to anarchy ; but ever 
since that declaration of freedom, England has had the most 
stable government in Europe. 

At first, one might think that removing our sectarian en- 
closures would set us all wild, but a second thought will show 
that it would lead to still stronger safeguards for purity and 
truth. The safest organization is that which depends not on 
outward walls, but on inward cohesion. It recalls the circum- 
stance which gave rise to that common expression — '* A Reg- 
ular Brick." King Agesilau^ was once asked by an ambassador 
why it was they had no walls around Sparta. " Come with 
me to-morrow morning," said the king, " and I will show you 
the walls of Sparta." Accordingly, the next morning, the 
king led his guest out upon the plain where his army was drawn 
up. "There," said he, "there are the walls of Sparta — ten 
thousand men, and every man a brick ! " So the security of 
the Church was not placed in its institutions, but in its men. 
It was to be an army of " thinking bayonets," each man 
strong in the Lord, and standing for himself a defender of 
the right. Such an organization is not a heap of sand. 
The hardest thing to overturn in the world is a Brotherhood 
where each member is free, and all are combined for a single 
purpose. 

An association like that does not need to govern its mem- 
bers every step by outward rule. Our Theological Seminaries 
are conducted on the brotherhood plan. The President of 
one of them was asked by a new student what were the rules 
of the institution : " Rules ! " exclaimed the venerable divine 
— " Rules ! we have no rules. Go and behave yourself like a 
gentleman ; and if you do not, we will let you know it." So 
the Christian is not to have human dictation as to everything 
he thinks and does. If in his freedom he should sometimes 
wander from the truth, the enlightening Word will eventually 
bring him back ; if he should err in conduct, every disciple 
around will be an admonition. The Christian is thrown upon 



Divisions Hurt ottr Liberty, '2^2, 

his honor ; he is responsible for the good name of the family. 
No discipline so powerful as that, and it gets the stronger 
as we grow in grace. Withdrawal of fellowship by such a 
body is a more formidable punishment than the prison or 
the rack. 

A strange instance of this was seen in the church of the Ohio 
Penitentiary. This church, founded and maintained for sev- 
eral years through the efforts of the Rev. O. H. Newton, num- 
bered at one time five hundred members. It was simply a 
Gospel Church ; its terms of admission — conversion from sin, 
and faith in Christ as the all-sufficient Saviour. There were 
no set forms, no creed, no rules. No denomination had any- 
thing whatever to do with it. Each member felt himself 
bound to maintain the reputation of the society, and it was 
touching to see the efforts which the poor fellows made to do 
this. Official documents reported that the members of this 
church showed a remarkable improvement in morals, and that 
those who became free, generally led a correct religious life. 
If Gospel liberty kept those men straight, can it not keep the 
rest of us ? 

Still more conclusive is the early history of the Jews. In 
the center of ancient Palestine stood the village of Shiloh, 
where for four hundred years the simple services of the Tab- 
ernacle were conducted. These were the palmy days of 
Israel. The government was a theocratic republic — a genuine 
republic, with a divine oversight through the High-Priest at 
Shiloh. Never was human liberty so complete on earth. The 
inspired record says : " In those days there was no king in 
Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own 
eyes," and never was there so pure a nation or church. 
But the desire to be like the kingdoms round about en- 
tered the Israelitish heart, and then came the beginning of 
the end. The simple worship and freedom of Shiloh were re- 
placed by a stringent ritual and a sceptred monarch ; and from 
that day the people began to sink. The more rules, the 
more individual liberty gave way to corporate ceremony 
and restriction, the deeper they went down, till at last, in the 
time of Christ, we find them most thoroughly governed — sub- 
jected at the same time to the Emperor of Rome, the King 
of Judea, and the hierarchy of Jewish Priests — but a peo- 
ple utterly demoralized and sunk. There is meaning in the 
i8 



2 74 Divisions Hurt our Liberty, 

fact that Jacob, looking forward with prophetic eye to the 
restoration of his children, sees it as the return to their first 
simplicity and freedom. " The sceptre shall not depart from 
Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, 
and unto Shiloh shall the gathering of the people be." 



CHAPTER XII. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR DISCIPLINE. 

" Spirit of grace ! Oh deign to dwell 
Within thy Church below ;. 
Make her in holiness excel, 
With pure devotion glow." 

DISCIPLINE PERVERTED. 

Discipline is keeping the tares out of the vineyard. Like 
weeds in a garden, bad men will start up among the saints ; 
they got into the apostolic Church, and will get in to the very 
end ; when discovered they are to be cleared away ; without 
this the Church cannot thrive or even live. In the forests of 
Brazil is often seen a plant called the matador, or murderer. 
Creeping modestly on the ground, no sooner does it reach a 
vigorous tree than with tenacious grasp it climbs, throwing its 
ligatures around every branch, and sucking out its nourish- 
ment, until the topmost bough is gained and strangled ; then, 
as if in triumph, the matador shoots a flaunting flower above 
the dead tree's crown. So would the Church perish did she 
let the parasites grow. Most carefully, therefore, are Christians 
enjoined in the Gospel to keep evil-doers from their com- 
pany, and to see that the Brotherhood is made up only of 
converted souls. 

With this duty our divisions sadly interfere. They pervert 
in great measure its Scriptural purpose. The sect insists on 
many things which the Bible leaves to each one's conscience ; 
it dictates as to ceremonies and opinions, and punishes its 
members who do not conform. Sectarian courts are busy 
with these trivial irregularities ; three-fourths of their proceed- 
ings are against the eccentricities of true believers ; the sword 
of discipline is turned against the branches of the vine. And 
while occupied with these mere ritual offenders, they allow 
real offenders to flourish untouched ; guarding their denomi- 
national peculiarities with all diligence, they tolerate an under- 

(^75) 



276 Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 

growth most noxious and deadly ; rigorous against dissent, 
they let in the world. 

THE WORLD LET IN. 

A gentleman traveling with a Christian friend, spoke of the 
wonderful progress of the world. " You forget one thing,'* 
said his friend, '' that the world has yet to answer for the 
murder and rejection of the Son of God ; that is the end of 
all its progress." That is the way the Early Christians looked 
upon it. They did not care for its politics or prizes or gold, 
for in their eyes the whole concern was doomed. 

At first, the Pagans were quite neighborly ; they offered Chris- 
tianity a place in their temple of idols ; they were willing to 
have Jesus worshiped in the Pantheon among the other gods. 
But the disciples refused ; they would not coalesce. The world 
and the Church were two entirely distinct communities, with 
opposite laws, opposite beliefs, and opposite purposes. The 
Church was in the world, but not of it ; she sailed upon it as a 
ship on the ocean, a detached, unconnected thing. When 
one came out and joined the Church, he was said to be '' cru- 
cified to the world ; " so complete was the change that he was 
known as *' born again." So, people called it " the execrable 
superstition," and it answered back, " the world lying in 
wickedness." 

There was always this distinction between the sons of God 
and the sons of men. Abraham was '* a stranger and a pil- 
grim on the earth;" and to Israel, God said — "Ye shall be 
holy unto me, for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you 
from other people that ye should be mine," and again — 
" They shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among 
the nations." 

But what a change do we see ! Ko-San-Lone, a converted 
Chinaman, when in America on a visit, noticed the slight dif- 
ference between professing Christians and people around 
them. Speaking of it on one occasion, he said — making a full 
sweep with his arm — " When the disciples in my country 
come out from the world, they come clear out." It is even 
so ; the warfare seems to be healed ; the parties mingle. Go 
to the Church and you will find the world there in all its 
brightness and gaiety ; go to the world, and you will find Chris- 
tians there, showy, ambitious, eager for money like the rest. 



Divisions Hurt our Discipline. 277 

If there Is any line between them, it must be such as the 
mathematicians tell of — a line without breadth or thickness. 

What has happened ? Has the world become Christian ? 
No; the carnal mind is still enmity against God. Christianity 
has becojne worldly. When the pure stream of the Ohio river 
mingles with the muddy torrents of the Mississippi, you will 
see for miles below the junction, eddies of clear, transparent 
water whirling in the midst of the turbid flood ; but it does 
not last long; it is soon all muddy together. So with this 
junction of the Church and the world ; it has been at our ex- 
pense. See ! How hard for those professing to have been 
washed in the same redeeming blood, to unite ; how hard to 
draw them into spiritual conversation ; how they delight in 
fashionable sanctuaries ; how engrossed are the men in busi- 
ness, and the women in display ; how many are without a fam- 
ily altar, or even closet prayer ; how often do they rate minis- 
ters by their eloquence rather than by their piety. Yes, the 
change has been in the Church. We have not purified the 
world, it has bemired us. 

What has wrought this grievous change ? — has the Church 
stopped all discipline ; has she put her pruning-hook utterly 
away ? No, but she uses it on the wrong parties ; she neglects 
it where most needed ; she compromises with those who should 
be wholly driven out. And this is in consequence of her di- 
visions. A little study will show how it has come about. 

WORLDLY MONEY. 

There is a story of two graceless scamps, who, finding them- 
selves in a sinking boat, concluded to devote their few remaining 
moments to religion. They could not pray or sing or remem- 
ber any Scripture ; the only thing they could recall from their 
rare visits to church was the passing of a plate, so they pre- 
pared for departure by taking up a collection. Whatever 
truth there may be in this, one thing is certain, the marked 
feature of our religious services is the perpetual call for money. 
Like an Italian beggar, the Church stands always holding out 
a hat. The casual attendant may not be affected by the wor- 
ship or touched by the discourse, but the basket will reacli 
him without fail. It is held a great thing for a minister to be 
adroit in aiming at the purse. This thing is wrong from be- 
ginning to end ; these begging sermons and collections in 



278 Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 

church, and mixing calls to repentance with calls for pelf, have 
no divine authority whatever. 

Upon examining Scripture we find that there is a heavenly 
dehcacy in this matter. Instead of sanctioning our rude and 
irnportunate appeals for money, the Lord evinces that He does 
not want it unless it comes from His own people, and from 
them voluntarily and unconstrained. 

Christian giving is in Scripture treated as a very private and 
sacred thing. It is the expression of the heart's gratitude to 
God, measured according as we have been prospered by God ; 
it is thus an act of faith and homage, a matter between the 
converted soul and the Almighty, into which no other being is 
to intrude — " That thine alms may be in secret," said the 
Master. The original way was for a box to be fastened at the 
entrance of the sanctuary, into which alms could be put with- 
out observation. Into such a receptacle did the widow cast 
those two mites which caught the eye of the Saviour. He 
approved the plan — '* Let not thy left hand know what thy 
right hand doeth." There were to be no public agitations for 
money. In getting help for the poor brethren in Jerusalem, 
St. Paul says, " Upon the first day of the week, let every one 
of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him, that 
there be no gatherings when I come T The Lord in His kind- 
ness is willing to accept our little tenders of love, but to be of 
any value they must come without solicitation or parade. If 
his children, for whom He sacrificed His only Son, cannot, 
through the impulse of love and as co-workers with Jesus 
Christ, volunteer funds for a sanctuary without public appeals 
and forced contributions, He evidently does not want that 
sanctuary to be built. 

But if the Church is not to beg from the saints, still less is 
it to ask the world for its money. Into the real privilege and 
blessedness of giving the unbeliever cannot come. '' Except 
a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God." 
The impenitent man being outside, his gifts are outside and 
get no reward or divine approval. Our articles of religion say 
distinctly, " Works done before the grace of Christ are not 
pleasant to God ! " What right have we, then, to ask a 
man to give to the Church before the grace of Christ has 
come to him ? None whatever. It is only demeaning our- 
selves and deceiving Him. The first thing we ask of a sinner 



Divisions Hurt our Discipline. 279 

should be his heart, and until he gives that, we should take 
nothing from him. 

And yet, what do we see ! — the Church everywhere on its 
knees entreating the world for money. Hardly a meeting but 
the promiscuous audience is asked to contribute. No account 
seems to be made of whence the money comes, if it only 
comes. When we build a sanctuary, we first offer the pews to 
any one who will buy them — no questions asked ; then we 
have festivals and fairs, offering the world food and finery for 
its dollars ; then we start jocose lectures and New England 
kitchens and mock-marriages, offering so much fun for so 
much money, and then we wind up with raffling and grab- 
bags and fish-ponds to inveigle it out of them. A disgusted 
christian, writing to the Brooklyn Eagle^ said this about it : 

" One of the churches got up the play of ' Punch and Judy ' in the church 
edifice for the amusement of old and young. There the Spirit has been 
quenched, and that church is dying of dry rot. In another church in the 
same neighborhood the ' learned pig ' was brought in to replenish the treas- 
ury. Another church engaged an actress to act Henry VIII. 'at the altar.' 
Of course, this too was to increase the funds. Soon after, some graceless 
young fellows were detected pilfering from the contribution boxes of that 
church, money which they spent at the theatres, gratifying a taste for the 
drama which had been begotten or nourished by the theatricals provided in 
the church. 1 am waiting to see how God will visit these follies of our 
dear church." 

The world sees the inconsistency, looks down on the Church 
with lofty patronage, and laughs. " My wife is the praying 
member of the church," said a scoffer once, '^ and I am the 
paying member." 

The excuse is, that Christians are so stingy that these devices 
are necessary to raise the needed funds. That is not so. 
Christians are not stingy ; they never were and never can be. 
Give them confidence in the Church ; let it stand before them 
clear and definite, and they will love to deck it with their offer- 
ings of joy, will heap up its missionary coffers, and never for a 
moment let it feel the lack of money. Diodorus Siculus says 
that the forest of the Pyrenean mountains being set on fire, 
the heat so penetrated the earth that a stream of molten silver 
gushed out, revealing the rich lodes which afterward became 
so celebrated ; so, let the great Christian heart be set on fire 
by a united and zealous church, and treasures will pour forth 



28o Divisions Hurt our Discipline. 

that we do not dream of now. Read in the thirty-fifth chap- 
ter of Exodus how the people contributed to the Tabernacle : 

"They came, every one whose heart stirred him, and every one whom his 
spirit made willing, and they brought the Lord's offering." 

" They came both men and women, as many as were willing-hearted, and 
brought bracelets and ear-rings and rings," etc. 

The Lord's plan was for none but the saints to give, and 
they only as their own hearts stirred them. This heavenly 
financiering brought the money. The only trouble was, it 
brought too much ; the builders complained of a surplus of 
funds ; the people had to be checked. 

" And all the wise men, that wrought all the work of the sanctuary, came 
every man from his work which they made ; 

" And they spake unto Moses, saying. The people bring much more than 
enough for the service of the work which the Lord commanded to make. 

" And Moses gave commandment, and they caused it to be proclaimed 
throughout the camp, saying, Let neither man nor woman make any more 
work for the offering of the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from 
bringing. 

" For the stuff they had was sufficient for all the work to make it, and 
too much." 

The same thing took place afterward at the building of the 
Temple, After contributing to the value of many millions of 
dollars, it is said : 

" Then the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly, because, with 
perfect heart they offered willingly to the Lord : and David the king also 
rejoiced with great joy." 

But it was a united church that drew out this liberality ; 
had there been half a dozen rival tabernacles or temples 
around, the Jews would have been as slow to give as we 
are. Were the Christians of any of our villages, one body, 
they would put up a sanctuary without any begging sermons 
or suppers or shows, and would be glad to do it ; but you can 
rouse no enthusiasm for a divided church ; how can you ex- 
pect zeal for a party meeting-house, when all about are other 
party meeting-houses only half filled ? 

Our sects, therefore, draw but feebly on Christian ardor ; 
members are backward in their support ; amputated limbs 
cannot get blood from the heart. What then ? We do what 
weak parties always do — we call in outside help. As Chris- 



Divisio7ts Hurt our Discipline. 281 

tians do not supply the money we want, we ask the world for 
it. The world is willing — quite so. It gives, and comes in 
along with its gifts. 

WORLDLY BOARDERS. 

Having paid its way, the world puts on its gold ring and 
goodly apparel and comes to church. Its money may have 
been made selling liquor or gambling in stocks ; no matter — 
it takes a prominent seat, well up the middle aisle. 

It is a strange element we thus bring into the Christian 
fold ; a modern element ; there is no mention of it in Scrip- 
ture from Genesis to Revelation. Technically defined, it is 
" pewism." It is a respectable sort of religion, quiet, deco- 
rous, leisurely. It comes out strong on great occasions and 
fair days. There was a certain period in Jesus' life when 
every one was talking of His miracles, and crowds were fol- 
lowing Him, and He appeared to be a rising man, that Simon, 
the Pharisee, invited him to dinner; so these honorary mem- 
bers smile on the Church when it is popular, invite it to din- 
ner, and give it the honor of their countenance. 

They do not take up any cross ; they have little to do with 
the toil of the church, the Sunday-school, or prayer-meeting ; 
their function is to lay off and inspect what others do. Some 
one says of the natives of New Mexico, that as a general rule 
the business of the men is to hang around the house and see 
the women work ; and the office of these worldlings in the 
church is to sit in the pews and see the minister work. 

It is a hotel sort of arrangement. A lady once asked a 
bright, but blase little boy, where was his home. *^ Got no 
home," said he ; " I board." So these brethren are the board- 
ing members of the Christian family ; it is not their home ; 
they have no interest in its fireside plans or feelings; they 
only care for the victuals and accommodations. 

But their influence is immense. Their gifts are not at all 
gratuitous ; for every dollar they put in the plate or spend at 
a fair or sign to a subscription, they keep strict account ; in 
consideration therefor they expect that the services shall 
please them. Just as they criticise the landlady's soup and 
be f on Saturday, they criticise the church's preaching and 
music on Sunday ; in each case it is a bill of fare which has 
been paid for, and which must suit the patrons. Their power 



282 Divisions Htirt our Discipline, 

is that of the guests in any boarding-house ; they must be 
gratified or they will leave ; they are ready at any moment to 
pack up and be off to some rival establishment. This would 
never do ; their money is needed for the salaries, needed for 
the debt, needed to save the property from the sheriff; they 
must be kept. So they stay, and give ; and in return dictate 
as to the preacher, the music, and the discipline. 

The pressure to please these boarders is one of the first 
experiences of the new pastor. A young minister about to 
preach his opening sermon before a church to which he had 
just been called, was urged by the gentleman who entertained 
him, to say nothing about hell. " There are," said he, " sev- 
eral Universalist families who have pews in our church, and 
we don't want them offended." The minister promised. At 
the vestibule of the sanctuary, one of the deacons drew him 
aside, and said : " Do you see those gentlemen just passing 
in ? They are Spiritualists, but come here to church occa- 
sionally. I wish you would be a little careful not to say any- 
thing that might hurt their feelings." The minister promised. 
Arrived at the pulpit stairs, one of the elders button-holed 
him with an additional caution : '' The wealthiest liquor-dealer 
in town has just come in. He gives us a lift sometimes, and 
I wish you would not allude to the Temperance question." 
Fairly frightened, the young clergyman hurried up the stairs, 
lest his moral ground should be still further narrowed before 
he could get out of reach. 

To be safe, a minister must not turn a deaf ear to these 
suggestions. The exigencies of finance caused by the compe- 
tition of other sects require that they should be heeded. And 
the result is thus given by the Philadelphia Presbyterian : 

" The Church of Christ has been managed in Philadelphia for years by- 
boards of trustees, in many instances, and according to the policy of mam- 
mon ; ministers have been called and dismissed to suit the financial policy 
of this legal, and often heartless corporation ; and the very invocation and 
' amen ' of the Church has been pew-rents ; and so if the pev/-rents were 
secure, the preacher could tickle the fancies, the choir could gratify the 
tastes, and the world could go to the Devil. Whether this shall be aban- 
doned or not, depends on the piety of the institution ; but that it has been 
spotted, and is shown leprous, is abundantly apparent." 



Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 283 

WORLDLY MUSIC. 

Christian music is an affair of the Christian heart. Like 
prayer, it does not depend on the performance, but on the 
feehng back of it. With the elect, music means business ; it 
is a short journey up from earth to the shining shore. Christ 
sang a hymn with His disciples, and then went out to Geth- 
semane and the Cross ; and Christians now sing in the depths, 
and are nerved for the conflict. Luther says that holy songs 
calm the agitation of the soul and put the Devil to flight. A 
Western captain, as he lay on the battle-field of Shiloh, suf- 
fered greatly from a gun-shot wound through his thighs, and 
from thirst. Speaking of it afterward, he said : 

" The stars shone out clear and beautiful above the dark field ; and I 
began to think of that great God who had given His Son to die a death of 
agony for me ; and that He was up there, up above the scene of suffering, 
and above those glorious stars ; and I felt that I was going home to meet 
Him, and praise Him there ; and I felt that I ought to praise God, even 
wounded, and on the battle-field. I could not help singing that beautiful 
hymn, ' When I can read my title clear,' etc. And," said he, " there was a 
Christian brother in the brush near me. I could not see him ; but I could 
hear him. He took up the strain ; and beyond him another and another 
caught it up, all over the terrible battle-field of Shiloh. That night the 
echo was resounding ; and we made the field of battle ring with the hymns 
of praise to God." 

That is Christian music ; it is a thing deeper than any voice 
or instrument, far beyond any measurement by the ear; it 
comes from the soul and appeals to the soul. We usually 
date our first holy impressions to some quiet hour when we 
listened to the simple strains of the country sanctuary. There 
is a deal of truth in these verses which we extract from the 
poem of Benjamin Taylor : 

" I have fancied sometimes the Bethel-bent beam 
That trembled to earth in the patriarch's dream 
Was a ladder of Song in the wilderness rest, 
From the pillow of stone to the blue of the blest ; 
And the angels descending to dwell with us here, 
' Old Hundred ' and ' Corinth ' and ' China ' and * Mean' 

" All the hearts are not dead, nor under the. sod, 
That those breaths can blow open to Heaven and God, 
And ' Silver Street ' leads by a bright golden road 
With the sweet-humored hymns that in harmony flowed — 
Yes, a sprig of green caraway carries me there — 
To the old village church and the old village choir. 



284 Divisions Hurt our Discipline. 

" When clear of the floor my feet slowly swung 
And timed the sweet praise of the songs as they sung. 
Till the glory aslant from the afternoon sun 
Seemed the rafters of gold in God's temple begun. 
Oh, be lifted, ye gates ! Let me hear them again. 
Blessed songs, blessed Sabbaths, forever, amen ! " 

But our boarders do not take to that sort of music ; they 
want art, not feeling. The simple old tunes may strengthen 
the tempted and comfort the widow, but as entertainments 
they are rather dull, and the pews must be entertained ; so 
we hire professionals — no matter where from. If the baritone 
from the negro minstrels gets the black off his face on Sun- 
day in time for the Te Deum, it is all we ask. " I do not 
care to go," said a young lady, when invited one evening to 
attend a concert. '' I went to the Holy Opera twice last Sun- 
day, and that will do me for one week." And a Frenchman, 
returning from one of our prominent New York sanctuaries, 
remarked that " the music was far better than he expected ; it 
was almost equal to that of the better class of Parisian caf6s." 
With this kind of performance our guests are delighted. 
" What a wonderful organist ! " '' What an elegant soprano ! " 
It fills the house and pays the mortgage, and we submit ; but 
as to spiritual power — subduing the proud or lifting up the 
mourner — we might as well listen to a jew's-harp. 

WORLDLY MEMBERS. 

Having foisted in her money and her boarders, overshad- 
owed our preaching and oup praise, another step brings the 
world into the Brotherhood itself, the sacred membership of 
the Church. Year by year we publish lists of communicants, 
but these lists do not tell the whole story ; let a committee 
go around with Scripture balances and weigh these members, 
and it would give a truer idea of the state of things. The 
evidence from all sides is that discipline has in great measure 
ceased, and that the unconverted in large numbers are en- 
rolled among the saints. In the story of Sinbad the sailor, 
we read of a magnetic rock rising from the surface of the 
ocean, whose attraction was so powerful that it drew out the 
iron bolts and clamps from any ship that came near, leaving 
the waves to come in to its loosened sides. Such a magnetic 
rock has worldly gold been to the Church. Under its fasci- 



Divisions Htirt our Disciplz7ze, 285 

nating spell, her stanchions have parted, her bulwarks have 
fallen away, and the sea has broken into her hold. Read the 
testimony. 

Says the Rev. George F. Pentecost, of Boston (Baptist) : 

" A confession can be had from the lips of the pastors of most of our 
churches that in our midst there are wicked, unholy, corrupt men who main- 
tain their positions, and are saved from a righteous discipHne either by their 
wealth or social position. It is true of this church, and it is true of many 
of the churches around us. If a ship should go to sea with as many rotten 
timbers as we have spiritually rotten members, it would go to the bottom 
in twenty-four hours. This departure from Christ has been brought about 
largely by the terrible and shameless worldliness of the churches. The drift 
of the churches in their social life, in their religious work, in their manage- 
ment, is to worldliness. One thoughtful, intelligent layman, a member of a 
church which is a leader in its denomination, said the other day, ' Our 
church has degenerated into a great, strong, social, fashionable organi- 
zation.' " 

The Rev. H. S. Colton (Congregationalist) testifies : 

" Discipline is so neglected that Achans and Calebs, Ahabs and Joshuas 
are in equally good standing in the churches ; and Judases are acceptable 
if they pay pew-rents and help build church edifices and parsonages. Pro- 
fessed followers of the lowly Jesus are no more expected or required to come 
out from the world and be separate therefrom than oil and water are ex- 
pected to mix and become one ; nor are they seriously expected or required, 
except in words (not in deeds), to love the world less because they profess to 
love God more. The long-hoped-for time seems to have come when con- 
trar}- to Christ's teaching, the nuptials of God and INIammon have been 
duly solemnized by the Church" 

The Rev. N. Richardson goes farther into the causes of the 
trouble : 

" It is a general complaint of good men in different Evangelical denomi- 
nations, that there is a great want of purity in most, if not all of the 
churches, at the present time. There is a letting down of Christian watch- 
fulness, a disregard of covenant obligations, a neglect of Church discipline, 
a want of care and caution in admitting new members, a winking at sin, 
careless living, etc. All this is true. 

" Some of the causes of this state of things are — the want of the spirit of 
self-denial to take the regular steps of discipline ; the improper considera- 
tion of the pecuniar)' interests of the church, or the question how will the 
discipHne of a member, or the reception or rejection of a candidate affect 
our pecuniary interests? — the spirit of rival ly and a desire for an increase 
in ntanbers without proper regard for qualifications. 

" The consequences of all this unfaithfulness are : We have in the 
churches men and women who are notoriously * conformed to this world ' — 



286 Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 

' lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God ' — immoral persons — cold and 
formal professors — those who 'have a name to live and are dead,' have 
never passed from death unto life. We speak that we do know and testify- 
that we have seen and heard when we say — there are in our churches, ' in 
regular standing,' notoriously intemperate men ; some have lived and died 
such, unreproved, undisciplined — licentious men, known to be such — fre- 
quenters of theatres and ball-rooms — profane persons and men notoriously 
dishonest. All this, and the Church continues in disobedience to the plain 
command of Christ (see Matt, xviii. 15) in refusing or neglecting proper 
discipline." 

The leading " Disciple " Review of the West, mentions how- 
discipline has been perverted : 

" The blunted conscience of the covetous man remains in the Church, the 
whisky manufacturer and vender take high seats in the synagogue, and half- 
converted, prayerless souls of the most indifferent grace — if they only hold 
the doctrines 'we teach,' can sit down at the communion table, while 
hearts the most subdued and mellow with the love of God, and that would 
die for Jesus' sake, are thought to be unworthy, because of some honest 
head-mistake as to some theory of religion." 

And the Church Journal (Episcopal) sums it all up in a 
sentence : 

" The overwhelming prevalence of sectarianism has indeed made disci- 
pline impossible among Protestants ; because if a man does not like the re- 
straints of one ' church ' he may go to any one of a dozen just as good." 

'' We have had a glorious revival of religion/' said a minister 
recently. '' Glad to hear it," was the response ; '^ how many 
were added to your communion?" *' Oh, none were added, 
but we succeeded in getting fifty unworthy members turned 
out ! " That is the sort of revival of which the Church is now 
most badly in need. 

THE UNGUARDED PASS. 

The testimony just given shows where our defenses are 
down. Through our divisions we have opened the way to the 
crying sin of covetousness. Says the Rev. F. W. Robertson : 

" The spirit of the world is forever altering, impalpable ; forever eluding 
in fresh forms your attempts to sieze it. In the days of Noah the spirit of 
the world was violence ; in Elijah's day it was idolatry ; in the days of 
Christ it was power, concentrated and condensed in the government of 
Rome ; in our day it is the love of money." 



Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 287 

This is the peculiar vice of our Protestant lands. A hun- 
dred years ago John Adams wrote from Philadelphia : 

"This predominant avarice will ruin America if she is ever ruined. If 
God Almighty does not interfere by His grace to control this universal idola- 
try' to the mammon of unrighteousness, we shall be given up to the chas- 
tisements of His judgments. I am ashamed of the age I live in." 

Yet it is worse now than then. One of our prominent living 
divines says : 

" If I were called to point out the most alarming sins to-day — those which 
are most deceitful in their influence, and most soul-destroying in their ulti- 
mate effects — I would not mention drunkenness with all its fearful havoc, 
nor gambling with its crazed victims, nor harlotry with its hellish orgies ; 
but the love of money on the part of men, and the love of display on the 
part of women. While open vice sends its thousands, these fashionable and 
favored indulgences send their ten thousands to perdition. They sear the 
conscience, incrust the soul with an impenetrable shell of worldliness, de- 
bauch the affections from every high and heavenly object, and make man or 
woman the worshiper of self. While doing all this, the poor victim is al- 
lowed by pubhc opinion to think himself or herself a Christian ; while the 
drunkard, the gambler, or the prostitute is not deceived by such a thought 
for a moment." 

This sin is peculiarly hateful to God. It is ranked in Scrip- 
ture with the worship of Moloch and Baal — '' Covetousness 
which is idolatry." It is not only forsaking God, but putting 
another divinity in His place ; not only desolating the soul's 
sanctuary, but setting up an abomination in the midst of it. 
It is at the very bottom of the heap. " The love of money is 
the root of all evil." More than any other sin it defies the 
Holy Spirit. After an extensive revival in Philadelphia, a 
Christian newspaper there remarked : 

"During the religious interest pervading the city, we have known of 
many cases of drunkards who have been reformed and converted ; not a 
few fallen women have been brought back to virtue ; profane swearers have 
been taught to reverence the Holy Name ; skeptics have confessed that there 
is a God ; backsliders of many years' sliding have been reclaimed. But if 
any instance has occurred of the conversion of a covetous man, we have yet 
to hear of it." 

We read in the Bible of thieves, persecutors, and murderers, 
who through abounding grace, were saved and made white for 
the kingdom, but not a word about the repentance of a covet- 
ous person. All of them — such as Balaam, Gehazi, Judas, 
Ananias and Sapphira — end in the dark. 



2 88 Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 

This vice is the one the Church to-day does not discipline. 
Weakened by division she is in such sore need of money that 
she dare not criticise those who bring it to her. Men will de- 
vote their lives to hoarding up wealth ; other men are used as 
grapes to be squeezed into their cup ; they live in magnificent 
selfishness while the poor shiver and starve around them ; then 
toward the close, they come to church, and the Church, aching 
for funds through the competition of sects, makes the way for 
them broad and easy, and asks no questions. The oak, after 
gathering through the night all the dew to itself, will in the 
morning wind shake off a few drops on the thirsty earth ; so 
these men, having spent their lives in accumulating, will at 
last give to the Church a few drops they cannot keep. The 
Church is delighted, and heralds their names among its bene- 
factors. Of these men, Ruskin says : 

" You would be indig-nant if you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or 
lecture-room, and calmly choosing the best place, take his feeble neighbor by 
the shoulder, and turn him out of it into the back seats or in the street. You 
would be equally indignant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up to a 
table where some hungry children were being fed, and reach his arm over 
their heads and take their bread from them. But you are not the least in- 
dignant if, when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, 
and instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater gift of being 
long-headed — you think it perfectly just that he should use his intellect to 
take the bread out of the mouths of all the other men in the town who are 
of the same trade with him ; or use his breadth and sweep of sight to gather 
some branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb, of 
which he himself is to be the central spider, making every thread vibrate 
with the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets 
of his eyes. You see no injustice in this ! " 

Oh, no, the Church condones all that if he will give her some 
of his gains. He enters, and is secure. You may discipline 
those who vary from the ritual or creed, but you cannot touch 
him ; his money being needed, his sin is indulged. How can 
you control him — with your mortgage dependent on him for 
its interest, your choir and clergyman dependent on him for 
their salaries, and most likely, with your notes for thousands 
of dollars in his pocket, how are you going to put him under 
discipline ? A congregation in the city of New York was in- 
volved in lawsuits and internal strife for twenty years, and al- 
most ruined, trying to get rid of a distiller ; we are generally 
more discreet, and do not attempt it. Yet what use has the 



Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 289 

Lord for a church which cannot discipline its wicked members 
because they are rich ! 

TOO WEAK TO DISCIPLINE. 

To perform this duty, the Church must be strong. The 
greatest divines have been severely tried in discharging it. 
Congregations are pleased to hear about faith and joy, but be- 
gin to deal with backbiters and cheaters and usurers and your 
hands will be full. Socrates, turning away from the questions 
of the Sophists, discoursed to the Athenians upon every-day 
moralities — '' about tanners and shoemakers and asses with 
pack-saddles" — and the Athenians turned and gave Socrates 
hemlock. Calvin, in Geneva, preached on the ''decrees" with 
great acceptance, but when he began to check the loose prac- 
tices of the " libertines " he found himself in trouble. And 
proud as we are of the fame of our greatest American preacher, 
Jonathan Edwards, we cannot forget that he was dismissed 
from his pastorate in Northampton, and almost literally driven 
out of the place by his people. They even refused to have 
him supply the pulpit when there was no one else to preach ; 
and all because he had condemned the excesses of the young, 
and tried to exclude the immoral from the table of the Lord. 

Were the Church, therefore, united and powerful, she would 
find discipline a trying duty ; divided and weak, she finds it 
impossible. Sects in conflict dare not allow their ranks to be 
thinned, especially of those who furnish the supplies ; thus it 
happens that those ministers are considered " safe " men, and 
'' practical " men, who shirk the duty altogether. Clergymen 
have gained reputation for sagacity and wisdom, by bending 
and blinking and glossing over so as never to disturb their 
covetous hearers. 

Sectarian societies indeed are often spoken of as powerful 
bodies ; folks say, '' This is a strong church," and '' That is a 
strong church," because it may have a long roll and wealthy 
members. But on Christian principles a strong church is 
something very different ; a company of half-a-dozen, who are 
full of the Holy Spirit, make a strong church, though they may 
be only hod-carriers and washerwomen. They are powerful be- 
cause of their influence with God — " they move the Arm that 
moves the universe." 

Such a church as that has courage. Like Gideon's army it 



290 Divisions Hitrt our Discipline. 

does not fear the face of man ; it is free to uphold any truth 
and to put down any sinner. The rich cannot threaten it, 
because it can go on without them ; it can afford to be poor. 
Societies often have the most spiritual power when they have 
least in their coffers, fewest in their meetings, and nothing 
but hostility from the world ; they are not entangled ; they 
can act with decision and with single eye to the right, because 
they are independent of human patronage. When a young 
man, Benjamin Franklin edited a paper in Philadelphia, and 
spoke rather freely of the misdoings of certain public men ; 
this frightened some of his patrons, and they cautioned him 
about it ; he replied by inviting them to supper. The feast 
consisted of two messes made of coarse meal, called " Saw- 
dust puddings," and a pitcher of water. Franklin helped his 
friends and ate heartily himself. They tried out of politeness 
to partake, but failed ; seeing their difficulty, Franklin turned 
to them and said : ^^My frie?tds, any one who can live on Saw- 
dust puddings and water ^ as I can, needs no mail s patronage ! " 
But a sect cannot take that position. It dare not show 
poverty. Being but a dissevered part of the Church, it can- 
not repose in the confidence and quietness of that inward 
strength which belongs only to the complete body. It must 
vie with its rivals in outward attractions, or it will be left one 
side ; and to keep up these attractions, it must take from any 
purse that offers ; it must have worldly patrons. Being thus 
dependent, it becomes of necessity timid ; it cannot face the 
world while craving its help. No sect, therefore, can ever be 
strong enough for Bible discipline. To regain her primitive 
purity, the Church must go back to her primitive oneness. 

WORLDLY MONEY NO HELP. 

In reply, it is said that money, though it does come from a 
wicked source, may do good in supporting holy institutions. Let 
us think over that. 

Money, however it comes, may .pay salaries and supply 
buildings and machinery ; and of that sort of thing our sects 
have great abundance ; there never was so much machinery 
or so well managed as to-day. But religious machinery is 
not power ; it may be only equipped and organized weakness. 
The Holy Ghost is not promised to machinery; we may fix 
our pipes and burners, but we cannot, like gas, force His influ- 



Divisions Hurt our Discipline. 291 

ence through them ; He " bloweth where He listeth/' and we 
have not read history to much account if we have not learned 
that He will not vitalize institutions that are tainted with sin. 
Herod built the temple of Jerusalem, but Jesus laid it under, 
a curse. On the other hand, the Early Church would not 
accept the worldling's wealth ; she pushed it away — " Thy 
moneyperish with thee." She got on without the ten-thousand 
appliances and attractions which money has brought to us ; 
she worshiped in dens and caves of the earth ; but she was 
strong ; God was with her, and never did she march so rapidly 
to conquest. When the unconverted Constantine lavished 
upon her the riches of the unconverted Roman empire, then 
she began to build cathedrals — and to die. 

The secret of church efficiency is distinctness from the 
world ; we do not impress men by adopting their methods 
and ways ; they believe us when we stand apart from them 
and above them, and show a holy and separate life ; to be 
effective the Church must move upon the earth an unearthly 
thing, her skirts well up from the mire. Says Mr. Spurgeon : 

" Whenever the Church has been thoroughly distinct from the world, 
she has always prospered. During the first three centuries the world 
hated the Church. The prison, the stake, the heels of the wild horse, 
these were thought too good for the followers of Christ. When a raan be- 
came a Christian he gave up father and mother, house and lands ; nay, his 
own life also. They were despised and rejected of men. ' They wandered 
about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, destitute, afflicted, tormented.' But 
then was the age of heroes. The Church went forth conquering and to 
conquer. Her main weapon was her non-co7iforinity to the world, her 
coming out among men. Put your finger on any prosperous page in the 
Church's history, and I will find a little marginal note reading thus : ' In 
this age men could readily see where the Church began and where the 
world ended.' Never were there good times when the Church and the 
world were joined in marriage with one another." 

Now the peculiarity of the world is that it w^ants money ; 
it is forever scheming and struggling for the " almighty dol- 
lar." To be distinct, therefore, we must not want money ; 
while earning enough for support, we must show our aim to 
be utterly beyond it. The world dreads poverty — we must 
not dread it. Those Christians have impressed the world who 
rather preferred to be poor. Luther said once : " I thank 
Thee, O God, that Thou hast made me a poor man on the 
earth." When the Elector sent him a valuable present, he 



292 Divisions Hurt our Discipline. 

wrote back that while he could not refuse what had been 
given by his prince, he begged his Highness would send no 
more, and would not listen to those who said he was in need, 
for he was not ; somebody had sent him sixty florins (about 
thirty dollars), and he began to fear that people would num- 
ber him with those whose portion was in this world. Mr. 
Spurgeon feels the same way, and once declined a testimonial 
proffered by his congregation, of two thousand guineas. 

The world's point of attack is seen in its course toward Mr. 
Moody and Mr. Sankey while in Great Britain. Their ene- 
mies tried in every possible way to show that they were mak- 
ing money; one paper said they were hoarding up their gifts; 
another that they were realizing from the sale of their singing- 
books ; another that they had an interest in the cabinet organs 
used in their meetings, and other falsehoods of the same nat- 
ure. The world knew it could cripple them if it could prove 
them anxious for money. 

It is clear, therefore, that holy institutions built by worldly 
money can have no spiritual power over the world. A sanc- 
tuary thus built, may have noble aisles and seraphic music, 
but it cannot convert. Says Dr. Olin : 

" A church may be what the world calls a strong church, in point of 
numbers and influence. A church may be made up of men of wealth, men 
of intellect, fashion ; and being so composed, may be, in a worldly sense, a 
very strong church. There are many things that such a church can do. 
It can launch ships and endow seminaries. It can diffuse intelligence, can 
maintain an imposing array of forms and religious activities. It can build 
splendid temples, can rear a magnificent pile and adorn its front with 
sculptures, and lay stone upon stone and heap ornament upon ornament, 
till the costliness of the ministrations at the altar shall keep any poor man 
from entering the portal. 

" But, brethren, I will tell you one thing it cannot do — ' // cannot shine' 
With all its strength that church is weak, and for Christ's peculiar work 
worthless. 

" On the contrary, show me a church poor, illiterate, obscure, unknown, 
but composed of praying people. They shall be men of neither power, nor 
wealth, nor influence ; they shall be families that do not know one week 
where they are to get their bread for the next. But with them is the hiding 
of God's power, and their influence is felt for eternity, and their light shines 
and is watched, and wherever they go there is a fountain of light, and 
Christ in them is glorified, and His kingdom advanced." 



The world itself declares this. In one of the bright books 



Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 293 

of the day, we find a young English fox-hunter saying to a 
clergyman : 

" When those that have renounced the world give up speculating in the 
stocks, you may quote pious people's opinions. We fox-hunters see that . 
the • religious world ' is much like the ' great world,' and the ' sporting 
world,' and the ' Hterary world ; ' and that, because this happens to he a 
money-making country, and money-making is an effeminate pursuit, there- 
fore, all sedentary sins, Hke covetousness, slander, bigotry, and self-conceit, 
are to be plastered over, while the more masculine vices are hunted down 
by your cold-blooded religionists. Be sure that, as long as you make piety 
a synon)Tn for this weak morality, you will never convert me, nor any other 
good sportsman." 

And the Boston Globe gives its opinion in these words : 

" Men with a vague idea that they are in danger of being lost in the next 
world for their peculiar mode of making money in this — attempt to com- 
promise with the Lord of heaven and earth. They make a million or two 
in 'cornering' stocks, and then — endow a theological university. Their 
prayer is nearly this : 'O God, if you will allow me to cheat my fellow-men 
after my fashion, I will give you ten per cent, on my gains ! ' They, ot 
course, pray to a fetish ; but the scandal is, that their money is received 
with gratitude ; nay, with Christian praise and thanksgiving and general 
puffery of their merit, by evangelical churches and theological institutions. 
The moral dirt on the dollar does not offend the eye or the nostril of the 
holy recipient. Is it not given for a holy purpose ? Shall we not save 
souls by this benefaction ? No, we should- be incHned to retort ; ever}' dol- 
lar given to you, which has been made in violation of Christian morals, is a 
counterfeit dollar which 3-ou should -be ashamed to circulate. It is a per- 
centage on heathenism, of which you become the unconscious accomplice. 
Reject it and you would be ten times as strong as you could be by a com- 
placent oversight of its dirty origin." 

For the real purpose of her mission, it is plain that the 
world's money has been no help, but a burden and drag to 
the Church. We read in the early chronicles of England 
that the Picts and the Britons having engaged in a quarrel^ 
the latter called in the Saxons to assist them ; whereupon the 
Saxons did come in, and settled the dispute by overcoming 
both and occupying the country themselves. In like manner 
we have appealed to the world to aid us against one another, 
and the world has responded by fastening itself upon us all. 
It has encouraged the strife, supplied each party with muni- 
tions of war, and then in quiet tone of power has laid its scep- 
ter on our pulpits, our choirs, and our discipline. 

It makes little difference how we preach while this weight 



294 Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 

is fastened to us ; it would have been a waste of time for 
Paul to preach to the natives of Malta while the viper was 
hanging to him ; and we must get this viper of worldliness 
off our hands before we can hold up the Cross with effect. 
The Rev. Dr. John Hall, of New York, has expressed the 
hope — 

" That the time would come when the Church shall say to men whose 
lives are not in accordance with the teachings of Christianity, 'we cannot 
take your money, we will have nothing to do with you until you have 
renounced your wickedness, and have learned to love and fear the Lord, 
and submit yourself in obedience to Him.' " 

METHODIST EXPERIENCE. 

The history of the Methodist denomination corroborates 
this position. 

Methodism did not start as a denomination, but as a re- 
vival of holiness ; its ministers were sojourners, without set- 
tled homes or income, and its constitution was a '' discipline." 
Its founders preached from tombstones and lived upon any 
morsel that came to hand. More than once John Wesley 
retired after service to some way-side hedge, and picked up 
his dinner from the blackberry bushes. One of these early 
Methodist preachers, pioneering in this country, was presented 
by a large land-holder with the deed of a farm. The gift was 
joyfully received, but in a few weeks he came back with it. 
*' What is the matter?" asked his friend; "any flaw in the 
title ? " " Oh, no ! " '' Isn't it good land ? " " Oh, yes ! good 
as any in the country ; but take it back ; I cannot keep it ; 
never since I had it have I been able to sing my favorite 
hymn — 

" ' No foot of land do I possess, 
No cottage in this wilderness, 
A poor, wayfaring man. 

** * I lodge a while in tents below, 

Or gladly wander to and fro, 

Till I my Canaan gain. 

" * There is my house and portion fair. 
My treasure and my heart is there. 
And my abiding home ' — 

and I would rather sing that hymn than own America." So 
he gave back the deed and went away happy. 



Divisions Hurt our Discipluie. 295 

These men, asking no favors from the world, dealt with it 
without gloves. They refused all partnership or bargains 
with it, never qualified their message to suit it, and free of all 
obligations to it, spoke straight from God, and straight to the 
soul. It was a day of power ; men fell before them like 
broom-sedge before a prairie fire. 

How is it with Methodism now? From a revival it has be- 
come a sect ; and like other sects, it has taken the world's 
money, and has built marble sanctuaries, and seminaries, and 
palaces on Broadway, and millionaire Book Concerns; but 
where are the old songs which swept over the crowds like an 
inundation ? Where is the message which once brought En- 
gland and America to their knees ? Thomas Aquinas was one 
day addressed by a great prelate of the Church of Rome, who 
held in his hands two golden basins full of coins. " See, Master 
Thomas," said he, " the Church can no longer say, * Silver and 
gold have I none.' " " True," replied Aquinas, '' neither can 
it say, ' In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and 
walk ! ' " 

From the midst of their machinery a cry is heard over the 
decay of their spiritual life. Thoughtful Christians among 
them would gladly exchange all their later wealth for their 
early purity and power. Nothing can be sadder than what is 
said and what is hinted at in the following remarks of the 
New England Methodist organ — the Zions Herald^ of Bos- 
ton : 

" Our place among the sects has, heretofore, been an honored one as a 
marked evangeHzing agency. We were born in a reformation, and our his- 
tory has been a revival. Are we ready to sink back into a permanent crys- 
tallization, and simply conserve what we have gained ? Has the fire of 
Methodism exhausted itself? Are we impatient of the providential and 
truly philosophical modes which have given us such a wonderful moral 
power in the community ? " 

It is remarkable that this demoralizing influence of worldly 
wealth was seen and provided against by the Methodist 
founders ; and in the original Book of Discipline they put in 
this paragraph : 

" All our churches must be built plain and decent, and with free seats 
wherever practicable ; but not more expensive than is absolutely unavoid- 
able, otherwise the necessity of raising money will ?nake rich 7nen necessary 



2g6 Divisions Hurt our Discipline, 

to us. But if so, we must be dependent on them, yea, and governed by 
them. And then farewell to Methodist discipline, if not doctrine too." 

This warning has not been heeded. It is a significant fact 
that the part printed in italics has of late years been quietly- 
omitted — it last appeared in the Discipline of 1868. Through 
the exigencies of sect, rich men have become necessary to our 
Methodist brethren, and their early strictness, simplicity, and 
power have departed. To be rid of the weight which is pull- 
ing them down, the Methodists must give up their sectarian 
organization and start anew as a revival ; and to rise into 
higher and stronger life, the Church at large must follow their 
example. 

VICTOR HUGO'S SUGGESTION. 

Victor Hugo has recently published a book which contains 
an extraordinary suggestion. An invitation is extended to 
the Romish communion to discard once and forever its profit- 
less league with monarchies and oligarchies ; to repudiate king 
and kaiser who have plundered and betrayed it ; to revert to 
the unaspiring spirit of its infancy, and to preach and practice 
in organization and in work those doctrines of equality and 
fraternity which it once proclaimed, and has at no time utterly 
overlooked. He pictures the Holy Father forsaking the Vati- 
can, with its treasures and pomps, and going forth barefooted 
and clothed in drugget to comfort the downcast and share the 
griefs of the poor. 

Can any one doubt that from such a revolution the Papacy 
would rise fifty-fold more powerful than now ? Her present 
power among the masses has not come from her tiaras and 
temporalities, but from the self-abnegation of her monks and 
nuns, her Franciscans and Dominicans and Jesuits. 

See the condition of the Church in Eastern Christendom. 
Both wings of the so-called orthodox body — the Russian and 
the Fanariote clergy — are smitten through and through with 
king-worship and greed of carnal things, and the result is 
spiritual and intellectual decay — a blight and rigidity that re- 
sembles death. 

The suggestion of Hugo has a deep significance for the 
Protestant world. Sectarian necessity is leading us, just as 
pride and ambition led the Greek and Romish hierarchies, to 
consort with the rich and great to the neglect of the poor. 



Divisions Httrt our Discipline. 297 

It Is a short-sighted and miserable policy. Let the Church 
return to her primitive unity and unworldliness ; secure in 
her own divine existence, needing no earthly props or pa- 
tronage, let her sit down with the ragged and hungry ; let her 
home and her work be where the wretched and reprobate and 
pariah, and all those beaten in life's battle, gather in hardship 
and hopelessness, and scatter among them her heavenly con- 
solations and gifts, and she would be strong with a strength 
she now dreams not of; she would be strong enough not only 
to rebuke the sin around, but to cast out that which should 
creep within. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR CHARITY. 

" Blest is the tie that binds 

Our hearts in Christian love : 
The fellowship of kindred minds 

Is like to that above. 
Before our Father's throne 

We pour united prayers ; 
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, 

Our comforts and our cares." 

THE COMMON TREASURY. 

In these days, when everything revolves around Number 
One, it will do no harm to review the nature of Christian 
charity. It is not a mere impulse or emotion excited by an 
eloquent appeal or tale of woe, but a principle of life based 
on the constitution of the Christian religion. 

There is a great deal said in the New Testament about a 
certain partnership formed between God and His people. In 
this firm are three divine partners — Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit— and many human partners — all who believe in the 
Gospel. The word used for it {koinojiid) means communion, 
common participation, kindredness, or, as it is usually trans- 
lated, fellowship. 

" Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ " 
(I John i. 3). 

" If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one 
with another " (i John i. 7). 

"And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship " 
(Acts ii. 42). 

In this great partnership all believers stand on a common 
platform as brethren in the Lord. Redeemed from a com- 
mon ruin by a common ransom, and made heirs of a common 

(29S) 



Divisions Hurt our Charity. 299 

inheritance, there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, 
bond nor free, but all are one in Christ Jesus. 

Each party in this partnership brings with him his capital, 
and invests it in the common stock. The " depths of the 
riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God," *' The un- 
searchable riches of Christ," and the " deep things " of the 
Spirit are all pledged for the benefit of the company. Each 
convert, likewise, brings into the common treasury all that he 
owns — '' No man lives to himself," The terms of the fellow- 
ship are — '' Look not every one on his own things, but every 
one also on the things of others ; " '* Freely ye have re- 
ceived, freely give ;" " For we, being many, are one body in 
Christ, and every one members one of another." 

There is division of labor, of course ; Christians have dif- 
ferent gifts, and as the partners in a mercantile firm divide 
their labor so that each may work more successfully for the 
benefit of all — one acting as book-keeper, another as salesman, 
another as purchaser, etc. — so in the Church, the gifts are 
classified, and their possessors assigned to the departments 
where they can be most useful. 

For instance ; on one is bestowed the " gift of tongues ; " he is 
fitted to study and expound ; so the brethren tell him : '' You can 
preach better than we ; we can make money better than you ; 
you attend to our pulpit, we will attend to your supplies." 
For, money-making is also a gift ; some men are plainly sent 
into the world to make money, and they can buy and sell and 
get gain as religiously as they can pray and sing, and as much 
to the glory of God. The wrong is not in making money, or 
in bending the energies to the task, it is in keeping the gift 
out of the partnership. " As every one has received the gift, 
so let him minister^ In the great publishing firm of Harper 
Brothers, one of the brothers was especially fitted for the lit- 
erary department, another for the mechanical department, an- 
other for the business department, etc., and they devoted 
themselves accordingly ; but the business brother did not keep 
to himself the money he took in ; he put it in the common 
fund. And so, " to continue steadfast in the fellowship " of 
the Church, the money-making brother must bring his earn- 
ings into the common firm, just as the clerical brother does his 
gift of speech, and the musical brother his gift of song. It is 
not a matter of sentiment or feeling, but of business integrity ; 



300 Divisions Hurt our Charity. 

he is not his own ; his earnings are not his own, and if he keeps 
back part of the price, he stands in danger, Hke Ananias and 
Sapphira, of being carried out dead as a liar against the Spirit 
of God. 

Such was the arrangement of the Early Church. It was a 
family of brothers, into whose one treasury each member 
brought his talents and his wealth. The record is : "' And all 
that believed were together, and had all things common, and 
sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men 
as every man had need." (Acts ii. 44, 45). Nobody was im- 
mensely rich, and none miserably poor. As all the rivers pour 
their waters into one sea, and all the roots of a tree convey 
their nourishment to one stem, and all the veins of a body 
empty themselves into one heart, from which the tide of 
blood borne along the arteries is sent forth again to be 
distributed to every member according to its needs — so was it 
in the primitive Church. What States have been in name, i.t 
was in fact — a COMMON-WEALTH, and the only one the world 
ever saw. 

^^ I have use for all my money ^' \s a remark we often hear 
from Christians now. The first Christians never talked that 
way. Each one was but part of a company, to which be- 
longed all he had and all he could make ; to hoard up for 
himself and to talk of '^ my money " would have been consid- 
ered dishonest, a fraud on the firm. 

Even in the Israelitish Church, believers were never thought 
to own what they had in charge ; God was the Proprietor. 
He loaned them things and required regular interest. Every 
year they were to give a tenth of the produce of the land for 
the support of the Priests and Levites, and every seventh year 
they were to release their debtors and throw open their fields 
to the poor. The Jews think the seventy years' captivity in 
Babylon was a punishment for their failure to pay these mort- 
gages. But when Christ came, nothing more was said about 
tenths and sevenths. His people were not to give up a propor- 
tion, a percentage, but all. '^ Ye are bought with a price, there- 
fore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are 
God's." When a man buys land, he buys all belonging to it, the 
trees on it and the minerals below, and when Christ bought us 
with His blood, He bought all there was to us, all our belongings, 
gifts, and capacities. This fact is the basis of Christian charity ; 



Divisions Hurt our Charity. 301 

it is not mere kindness, mere benignity to those in need, but 
handing in to the common treasury what belongs to the com- 
mon treasury ; it is carrying out what is really true, that we 
have nothing we can call our own but Christ and salvatioa 
that all else has been surrendered to God. 

THE ENTIRE SURRENDER. 

One of the principal reformers of the last century was Lady 
Huntington, of England. '' She is all in a flame for Jesus," 
said Whitefield. Consecrating her entire possessions to the 
Lord, she gave away during the last forty years of her life 
over a hundred thousand pounds to His cause. Pressed for 
funds on one occasion, she gave up her jewels to build a 
meeting-house for the poor. When the Prince of Wales in- 
quired one day where she was : '' Oh," was the reply, '^ I 
suppose she is somewhere praying with her beggars." The 
Prince was not specially devout, but he responded then : 
'' When I come to die I would like to have hold of the 
fringe of Lady Huntington's mantle ! " 

That is Christian charity of the original pattern. It is giv- 
ing to the Partnership all one has, and that not being enough, 
giving one's self after it. There was once a missionary meet- 
ing, and a contribution was taken up. The boxes were returned, 
and the contents counted over — bank-notes, gold, silver, and 
copper. ''There is a card — who put that in?" "A young 
man back in the congregation." " What is written on it ? " 
'■' Myself y That young man understood the matter. 

President Edwards had caught the spirit. He once said : 

" I have this day been before God, and have given myself — all that I am 
and have— to God ; so that I am in no respect my own, I can challenge no 
right in myself; in this understanding, this will, these affections. Neither 
have I a right to this body, or any of its members ; no right to these hands, 
these feet, these eyes, these ears, this tongue ; I have given myself clean 
away." 

It is well to remember that whatever the present state of 
things, this original, principle of Christianity has never been 
revoked. Now as ever one actually new-born does give up 
all. An anxious lady recently consulted Mr. Moody as to 
her soul. He knelt with her in prayer, requesting her to re- 
peat his words. She repeated every sentence till the last was 



302 Divisioits Hu7't oitr Charity, 

reached. " And now, O Lord, I give myself to Thee." '^ Mr. 
Moody," said the lady, in a painful whisper, '^ I cannot say 
that ; truly I cannot." A pause of half a minute, then again 
he uttered the words: "And now, O Lord, I give myself to 
Thee." No response, and for the third time he repeated the 
vow. After a moment of silence, the new convert slowly said : 
" And now, O Lord. I give myself to Thee ! " Mr. Moody rose 
and led her to the door, saying: "Madam, I devoutly thank 
God." She had learned the lesson, and ever since has been 
active in charitable work. 

The matter is well expressed in the words of Frances R. 
Havergal : 

" Take my life, and let it be 
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee. 

" Take my hands, and let them move 
At the impulse of Thy love. 

" Take my feet, and let them be 
Swift and beautiful for Thee. 

" Take my voice, and let me sing 
Always, only, for my King. 

" Take my moments and my days, 
Let them flow in ceaseless praise. 

" Take my will, and make it Thine, 
It shall be no longer mine. 

" Take my heart, it is Thine own ! 
It shall be Thy royal throne. 

" Take my love ; my Lord, I pour 
At Thy feet its treasure-store ! 

" Take myself, and I will be, 
Ever, only, all, for Thee." 

The converted man, thus whether engaged in preaching or 
money - making, is always thinking: What can I do for 
Christ ; what can I do for the brethren ? " There is a tradi- 
tion that the site on which Solomon's temple was built, was 
originally occupied by two brothers, one of whom had a family 
and the other none. The evening after a harvest, the elder 
said : " My brother looked feeble to-day ; I will take my wheat 
over to him." The younger was at the same time saying to 



Divisions Hurt our Charity, 303 

himself: " My brother has a family to support, and I none ; I 
will take my sheaves over to his pile." So they met each other 
carrying their shocks. Whether Solomon's temple was built 
on such ground or not, one thing is certain, Christ's temple was. 
In short, wrapped within the word unselfishness, in its full 
and glorious meaning, lies the germ of Christian Charity. The 
little planet we stand on was once reckoned the center of the 
universe, but when Copernicus supplanted Ptolemy, the earth 
retired into the humility of a satellite and waited on the lord- 
ship of the sun. So, in the reckoning of worldliness, self is 
central, self-gratification is the main thing ; but when a man 
becomes a Christian, the center is moved to the throne of 
God. He says : " The love of Christ constraineth me," and 
like Christ, he lives for others ; he comes not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister. 

THE FULL SCOPE. 

Christian Charity requires full sweep in another direction also ; 
it is boundless not only in itself, but in its outreach — as the 
logicians say, not only subjectively, but objectively. As it 
freely gives up all, so it opens its heart to all ; like the sun, it 
throws out its beams on every side. Make any sordid reserve 
in the fountain of Charity, and you destroy it ; and equally, 
make any sordid restriction in its outflow, and you destroy it. 
For Charity is a divine grace ; it will not bear a touch of selfish 
manipulation ; when a divine grace becomes partialized and 
limited, when it ceases to be infinite, it ceases to be a divine 
grace at all. Make any lines in Charity, put a wall through it 
anywhere, and you peril its existence. 

But that very thing is what our divisions do — they localize 
and confine our beneficence. For example, a man subscribes 
ten thousand dollars to some mission or asylum ; yet in that 
man's factory you may find scores of operatives whose bodies 
are overworked, whose souls are blistered with poverty, and 
out of whom profit is remorselessly wrung to the very last 
penny. His gifts do not ^o^ in that direction ; they go off to 
some special class or pet object. It is not Christian charity. 

An excellent lady up-town, gives from her princely fortune 
some twenty thousand dolla:rs per year. Where does it go ? 
Yielding to sectarian advice, she gives five thousand dollars 



304 Divisions Hurt our Charity. 

to build a partisan steeple in Rome, and one thousand dollars 
here and there to help on partisan sanctuaries in Nebraska 
and Colorado ; yet not an hour of the day but children gaze 
up at her mansion who are suffering for food, and sisters 
walk on her pavements who are sinking in despair for lack of 
a sympathizing word. It is not Christian charity. 

What strange contrasts do our streets present. Look at 
some pictures : 

" Hundreds of little Italian boys are kept by old hags on Cherry and 
Baxter Streets just to steal and beg. If they come home at night without 
having stolen or begged certain sums, the poor little fellows are whipped 
and made to go to their beds on the floor without any supper. Most of 
these boys turn out pickpockets, and eventually go to the Island or Sing 
Sing as burglars and housebreakers. One little fellow who has lived on 
Cherry Street for seven years didn't know what the Bible was, and he told 
us he had never heard of Christ." — Euenmg Paper. 

But— 
" The private stables of Mr. Belmont, Bonner, and many other gentlemen 
are made of black walnut, beautifully furnished, and nicely warmed. The 
horses are clothed in soft, white blankets, and fed with the regularity of 
clock-work." — Mr. Bergh's Letter. 

" A woman, who up to the time of going to press had not been identi- 
fied, was found dead yesterday morning on a door-step in Thirty-fourth 
Street. The deceased evidently wandered from some of the poorer wards 
in search of employment, and from her emaciated condition it is probable 
she had not tasted food for several days. It is thought that poverty and 
starvation caused her death. The body, scantily clothed in a few rags, lay 
unclaimed in the Morgue." — Police Gazette. 

But— 
" Mrs. Livingstone's elegant and fashionable reception and german, at 
her palatial Fifth Avenue mansion on Monday evening, was too gorgeous 
for description. Many of the ladies' toilets came from Worth's, and cost 
fabulous sums, and the flowers which draped the rooms — all rare exotics — 
must have cost a small fortune. Among the guests sparkling with jewels 
was Mrs. Lawrence, whose bridal trousseau cost seven thousand dollars. 
The rare and expensive wines which cheered the occasion astonished even 
the connoisseurs." — Home Journal. 

If these rich people are not Christians, we have nothing to 
say ; but the same extremes appear among those who are 
Christians. One drags out existence in penury^ and want, 
panting for breath in a stifling tenement-house, while his 
neighbor Christian rolls in carriages, spends vast sums for 



Divisions Hurt our ChaiHty. 305 

pictures and statuary, and luxuriates during the hot season 
in a shady country-seat or at the sea-side. Why does the 
converted heart permit this ? . 

The difficulty is, charity has been contracted in its range. 
Sects have divided the field, and Christian bounty, instead of 
streaming out naturally, to the first objects first, is directed 
through some particular channel to some chosen spot. This 
is why we neglect the perishing at our doors to help the 
needy at a distance. John Randolph visiting a lady, found 
her making up a quantity of clothing. " Who for?" "I am 
going to send them to the poor Greeks," she informed him. 
On taking his leave he saw some shivering children begging 
at the steps of the mansion, and turning about he announced 
to the lady that she need not box up the goods, for the 
Greeks had come to her very door ! 

The Saviour was especially careful as to this point. He 
would not have gifts bestowed even upon the temple while 
there was suffering immediately around. He Himself never 
turned away from present distress; whatever He did for the 
world at large or for the ages to come. He always had a tear 
for the sorrowing and help for the sick who were at His 
hand ; and to follow His example w^e are to love all we meet, 
and help all we see. 

It is only by giving charity this unfettered play, letting it 
flow to every one around who needs it, that we keep alive 
that feeling of sympathy which is the marrow of the whole 
thing. An eminent English philanthropist, wearied with the 
deadness of charitable machinery, once exclaimed : 

" If you would extinguish injustice ; if you would be ready to allow men 
their rights ; if you would relieve the poor and instruct the ignorant and. 
emancipate slaves and abolish all social evils ; first of all, ^^/ a soul /" 

But that is what we do not get. In the midst of our parti- 
san missions and sectarian asylums and denominational sti- 
pendiaries, the soul of charity is dying out. Choosing and 
picking out our beneficiaries, large classes and sections of the 
needy just about us are passed by uncared for ; and by a well- 
known law of the mind, the more suffering we see that we do 
not aid, the less we feel for it. So it happens, while tenderness 
is tubed over to some country or sect or kindred, philanthropy, 
that love of the race, that doing good to all men, which is 



3o6 Divisions Hm^t our Charity. 

Christian charity, is becoming extinct. We grow wise and 
pure and refined and one other thing — hard-hearted. The 
callousness, the positive cruelty, which has thus come to pre- 
vail in Christian lands, is startling. Says Canon Kingsley, of 
England : 

" We are sorry for the victims of our luxury and our neglect. Sorr)' for 
the thousands whom we let die every year by preventable diseases, because 
we are either too busy or too comfortable to save their lives. Sorry for the 
savages whom we exterminate, by no deliberate evil intent, but by the mere 
weight of our heavy footsteps. Sorry for the thousands who die yearly in 
certain trades, in ministering to our comfort, even to our very luxuries and 
frivolities. Sorry for the Sheffield grinders, who go to work as to certain 
death. Sorry for the people whose lower jaws decay away in lucifer-match 
factories. We are sorry for them all — as the giant is for the worm on 
which he treads. Alas ! poor worm. But the giant must walk on. He is 
necessary to the universe, and the worm is not. So we are sorry — for half 
an hour ; and glad to hear that some society or the Government are going 
to do something toward alleviating these miseries. And then we return, 
too many of us, each to his own ambition, or to his own luxury." 



CONTRACTION FATAL. 

The more we reflect, the more sure will we be that charity 
cannot allow these contrasts between neighboring Christians. 
The converted heart embraces in its generous clasp all its fel- 
lows. The Christian is a kind man, according to the old 
Saxon meaning of that word ; that is, he is kinned, in kinship 
with others. To him, mankind is man-kinned, of one blood ; 
and all the souls of men are precious in his sight. 

It is so with Christ. In the stable at Bethlehem, crowned 
sage and lowly shepherd knelt together at the side of the 
Babe; and in His ministry Jesus paid no more attention to 
priest and ruler than to publican and sinner. In His sight all 
are equally dead in sin, all in equal need of atoning blood. 
As the paper-maker puts his rags, whether from the rich man's 
wardrobe, or the beggar's back, in the same water and by the 
same machinery converts them into white paper, so does 
Jesus make by one process all who come to Him new creat- 
ures for His kingdom. 

Thus does the Christian look on the souls of men ; he does 
not love only that which is lovely, or which loves him in re- 
turn ; he sees in every soul, however degraded, the image still 
of its Maker ; sees in that image, however defiled, the possi- 



Divisions Hurt otir Char^ity, 307 

ble angel. Pride digs trenches between what are called the 
different classes of society ; the Christian does not recognize 
them. Looking upon the laborer in the solemn dignity of 
his origin, he ranks him with the capitalist — with the mon- 
arch, and sees in one as in the other — Man — and taking 
each by the hand, falls at the common footstool, crying, " Our 
Father ! " 

The only distinction Christianity recognizes between souls, 
is their being in, and their not being in Christ. Between the 
souls in the ark it tolerates no divisions at all. The Children 
of Israel were required regularly to pay a capitation tax — the 
ransom of the soul, and as all their souls were of equal value, 
this tax was the same for every one of them. So with the 
believer, all the ransomed stand on the same level. An En- 
glish nobleman once visited that great preacher. Rev. Robert 
Hall, to take tea wih him. It was the same evening of the 
week when a poor old saint, named Thomas Newcombe, who 
gained his living by selling stockings, was accustomed to eat 
at the parsonage. Mrs. Hall kept the old man in the kitchen 
that evening. " Where is friend Newcombe ? we cannot go 
to supper without him," said the preacher ; and so he waited 
until the good la ly uncaged her captive, and brought him in 
at the side of her distinguished guest. That was Christianity. 

As Christianity permits no social rank to divide believers, 
so neither does it permit opinions to do so. Any ditch be- 
tween peculiar views is a gash in its heart. Such chasms in 
the Church drain away its life-streams, leaving it dry and bare 
and fruitless as a desert. 

The first motive of the sect is selfishness. A Christian finds 
his fellow holding what he thinks a wrong opinion. " Love 
him ; cling to him ; enlighten him," says Christ. " Leave 
him ; go off by yourself," says the old man. The Christian 
leaves his hold, and goes off with those who think as he 
thinks. What happens ? His sympathies, which before spread 
out to every Christian, are now confined to the channel of 
his sect; his soul-breathings are for his party; his energies 
are concentrated on what he calls '"'■ his church." Here is a 
specimen. A citizen of Turner's Falls, Mass., once wrote 
to the Watchman and Reflector his view of the needs of that 
village. He said : 

"We want Baptist y^nng men in our mills, also a Baptist dentist, a Bap- 



3o8 Divisions Hurt our ChmHty. 

tist ' meatman,' a Baptist milkman, a Baptist barber, a Baptist dry-goods 
merchant, and Baptists to start business of all kinds. We want Baptist 
ladies too. Baptist girls who will carry their religion into the mills will be 
a God-send, A first-class Baptist milliner is needed. The Baptist society 
is the most intelligent here, and the pastor will gladly answer any letters of 
inquiry from smart Baptist people." 

That was a case of spiritual congestion ; there was unhealthy 
accumulation of that writer's Christian blood to one part. So 
with every sectarian ; he wants to associate only with those 
who agree with him. 

Having once begun, the selfish contraction increases. When 
a man cantons off his views into a separate corner, he always 
goes on to separate his money and everything else from the 
general firm. For charity, being free and irrepressible as the 
wind, cannot be confined within any walls without losing its 
force ; it will not shrivel into a sect without shriveling further. 
Coleridge says : " He who loves his sect better than Christianity, 
will end in loving himself better than either." 

And that is precisely what takes place. The Christian first 
compressed into a denomination, next picks out of that de- 
nomination those of his own taste and social standing. If rich, 
he selfishly associates only with the rich ; they build a splendid 
sanctuary, convenient to themselves ; they secure the best 
preacher, the best music, the best pews, and put their own 
names on these pews. Ensconced among their own set, they 
deal with the sinners and sufferers outside only through hired 
agents. With them, preaching the Gospel to every creature, 
means hearing each Sunday two high-toned essays among a 
fashionable audience, in an up-town temple ; and charity means 
putting something in the basket when the city missionary 
preaches. Narrower and narrower grows the contraction. 
The bounds of the sectarian's heart come closer and closer, 
like the prisoner's walls told of in the '' Arabian Nights," till 
they come to the limits of his own pew ; they decrease to the 
size of a coffin — his size. And there— with all the miserable 
world around him — there he reclines, lulled to sleep in a par- 
adise of self-improvement and self-enjoyment ; listening to 
beautiful sermons ; cultivating his own emotions ; looking to 
one object — himself. 



Divisions Hzci^t oztr Charity. 309 



THE CHURCH OF NEW YORK. 

As we can appreciate the matter best by studying a single 
example, let us take the case of the Church of New York. 

No church ever had a grander sphere for charity. Cities af- 
ford a peculiar field for Christian activity. Masses of men, from 
their mere aggregation, are especially liable to impression ; 
thoughts, like contagions, spread rapidly among them ; not a 
revolution in France but began in Paris. Even the visitor to 
our cities gets a fresh tinge of character, and is made either 
the better or worse. The army of young men who come into 
New York every year to engage in business take almost at 
start the upward or downward road. Preaching once in a ru- 
ral parish of New England, we inquired of the pastor concerning 
a noble-looking youth we saw in the congregation. '' Oh," said 
he, " such boys as that stay but little while with us ; they 
always go off to New York." Around such a youth, lonely 
and homesick on his arrival, ready for the first companion or 
attraction, Satan throws his choicest allurements. Yes, Incar- 
nate Love beheld the City and wept over it. To Antioch, to 
Damascus, to Ephesus, to Athens and Corinth and Rome 
did the apostles first direct their steps. 

And New York! what a place for the leaven that is to 
leaven the whole lump — the gateway through which pour 
eleven-twelfths of the emigrants from the Old to the New 
world ; with a population ever coming from and going to the 
four quarters of the earth. Among the two millions of people 
on and around Manhattan Island, are more Germans than ih 
Berlin, more Irish than in Dublin, more Romanists than in 
Rome, and more Jews than in Palestine. The prevalent be- 
lief is Rationalism ; the finest building is a Popish cathedral, 
and within a stone's throw of the City Hall, the Chinese have 
a temple where more than five hundred worshipers of Fo as- 
semble regularly before an image of their god. A New York 
clergyman startled his people one Sunday morning by saying 
that he intended soon to go on a mission to the heathen. 
They crowded around him to remonstrate. '* Don't be alarmed, 
good friends," said he, " I am not going out of town ! " 
''Idolatry!" says Dr. Chapin. "You cannot find any more 
gross, any more cruel, on the broad earth than in the vicinity 
of this pulpit." 



3IO Divisions H^Lrt o^tr Charity. 

But notice the field especially as it appeals to the Christian 
heart. See how closely the masses are packed. Half a mil- 
lion people are huddled in tenement-houses with little chance 
for seclusion or decency ; forty or fifty families often under one 
roof. 170,000 families live in 27,000 houses. One ward in 
New York contains the densest population known in any city 
of the world. The result may be imagined. We used to 
shudder at thought of the children thrown into the Ganges — 
its waves never stopped half so many infant breaths as the pu- 
trid air of these crowded habitations. And multitudes of 
these children who do live, live only to breathe a still deadlier 
moral atmosphere. Born of drunken parents, with no home 
but a garret, and no playground but the gutter, they grow up 
neglected and Christless, and hasten on to prison, to the gal- 
lows, to eternity, knowing nothing of God or His grace. 
Here are boys taught to steal by their fathers, and daugh- 
ters driven to shame by their mothers. We call a town of 
10,000 people a large place. New York could fill a city large 
as that with its thieves and children trained to crime ; it 
could fill two such cities with its fallen women; it could fill 
twelve of them with its regular tipplers. One hundred thou- 
sand persons are on an average sent each year to the various 
prisons, alms-houses, reformatories, nurseries, and hospitals 
of the city, one-half of whom are convicted of some crime or 
misdemeanor. On the wide earth is there a better field for 
charity ? 

Think of the neglected girls of New York. An advertise- 
ment recently called for ballet dancers to take part in a spec- 
tacular drama ; next morning over eight hundred young girls 
out of employment gathered around the theater doors. At 
the best barely able to maintain themselves, what can these 
girls do when hard times take away their slender support } 
One of the city judges, in a speech before the Prison Asso- 
ciation, said : 

" Many a time these poor creatures are brought to court charged with 
crime, which though technically proved, shows such attendant circumstances 
of sorrow and priv^ation as almost to take away the offense. A girl six- 
teen years of age was lately brought before me for stealing a dress ; I asked 
her why she did it, and she unfolded her sad tale. She came to the city a 
stranger, failed to get work, ran out of money, pawned her clothes, and then 
to hide her rags, stole the dress. Could I send her to prison ? No ; I had 
not the heart to do it." 



Divisions Hurt oui^ Charity. 311 

A police magistrate has heart — how about the Church ? 

Thousands of these poor girls are in still more need of pity; 
they have fallen still lower. How much heart is shown for 
them? Lost! Who says lost? "Since God has saved me," 
says old John Newton, '' I never despair of anybody ! " 
Abandoned ! Yes, they are abandoned, but they would not 
be if the Church of New York had not lost its charity ; what 
right have we to talk of abandoning people while that word 
''^uttermost'' stands in the Bible? When the city missionaries 
first invaded John Allen's den in W^ater Street, they wanted 
some singing, and asked the girls what song they liked best. 
At once they replied : '' Oh, give us ' There is rest for the 
weary.' " And they all joined in the chorus, weeping and 
singing : 

" On the other side of Jordan ; in the sweet fields of Eden, 
Where the tree of hfe is blooming ; there is rest for you." 



W^hat did that mean ? At a revival in St. Louis awhile ago, 
they held union meetings in front of some of the most notori- 
ous houses ; and the inmates brought out their tables for the 
preachers to stand on. What did that mean ? Down drop 
these poor creatures every day, almost every hour. '' They 
only last four years, on an average,'' says a city official. W^oman 
was not made to be friendless, and she does not stand it long. 

And that reminds us of the end. " Fifteen corpses were 
received in the Morgue yesterday," said a daily paper not long 
since. These Morgue cases are a part of that number who 
pass into the shadows without obituary ; whom no one in 
New York misses or talks of; who simply disappear. A for- 
eigner, it may be, who finding no employment in the new 
world, becomes weary and sick, and throw^s himself off the 
dock ; a youth, perhaps, from some country home who comes 
to the city with his first entrusted funds ; the gamblers, the 
den, the knife, the river! or, a woman, w^ho comes as a snow- 
flake comes, and being stained with mud, goes off in the sewer 
as our snow-flakes do. Away over the seas they write a letter 
which gets no answer, and up on the hills, in the widow's cot- 
tage, they wonder why no news from John, or Sarah ; but that 
is all ; in New York, that history has no record — nobody 
knows the particulars, and nobody cares. 



312 Divisions Hurt our Charity, 

But fifteen of these cases in one day ! An ample field for 
Christian charity, indeed. 

HOW IT OUGHT TO BE. 

Let us think for a moment how it would be if the Church 
of New York were organized in the Bible way, and practiced 
Bible charity. 

As it is Scriptural to have everything done decently and in 
order, the Church would first systematize its operations. It 
would district the city into parishes, and each Christian would 
labor first and foremost for his parish ; he would not forget 
the needs of Madagascar or Nova Zembla, but his present, 
every-day exertion would be for his neighbors. The wickeder 
they were, the lower they were, the harder would he work for 
them. Poverty and coarseness, instead of driving him off, 
would only excite his pity and stimulate his zeal. 

Each parish would have a sanctuary large enough for all 
who would come ; the denser the population, the more sanc- 
tuaries. As the Church of New York, enfeebled by no divis- 
ions, could command the resources of all' its members, its 
sanctuaries would be free as air, and beautiful as art and wealth 
could make them. As the wealthy Christians would consider 
the poor rather than themselves, the grandest of these temples 
would be built in the poorest parts of the city, and in them 
would be placed the finest organs and softest cushions. 

(Note here. We have heard people complain of the splendor 
of our houses of worship, as if that kept the poor away. Non- 
sense. There are none of them splendid enough. " Religion," 
says Mr. Lecky, " is the one romance of the poor." When a 
man lives in a tunnel he wants the sun to shine its best when 
he does get out. Roman Catholics make their sancturaries 
gorgeous as possible, and they are crowded. Bridget from her 
tubs, and Dennis from his spade enter on Sunday an enchant- 
ment of color and harmony, where the highest genius in paint- 
ing and music has been pressed into the service of religion. 
In the superb Romish cathedral on Fifth Avenue, the most 
beautiful specimen of pointed Gothic outside the city of Milan, 
hod-carriers kneel side by side with capitalists, without the 
least idea of restraint.) 

In these great sanctuaries among the masses, the Church's 
picked men would be placed. In that vast plain to the east- 



Divisions Htirt ou7' Charity, 313 

ward of Third Avenue, covered with huge tenements, she 
would station John Hall in an edifice holding ten thousand 
people. What enthusiasm ! What a flood of song ! It would 
be the Hippodrome meetings all the year round. 

What a power for good would the Church then be ! With 
clear and undistracted voice it would deliver from the pulpit 
the testimony of Jesus, and then it would go forth with its 
mercies. Instead of holding out its basket /<?r alms, it would 
take to the needy its basket with alms. It would enter into 
the wants of the working people ; it would protect their 
food from adulteration ; it would stand between them 
and grasping monopolies ; it would shield them from the op- 
pressor and the sharper ; it would see that their earnings had 
some secure place of deposit ; and last, though not least, it 
would provide them with amusements ; it would attract them 
from theaters and drinking- saloons to entertainments that 
would gratify and elevate. The Rev. Newman Hall, speak- 
ing at a meeting in London of the way to reach the poor 
with the Gospel, said : 

" It is an absolute essential of our humanity that we should have play. 
We all have it in some form or other — we have it in a cultured manner 
and in a Christian way. But what have the artisans in the way of amuse- 
ment ? They have the penny gaff, the low theater, the public house, where 
their lowest tastes are pandered to ; and- it seems to me it is just as much 
the duty of the Christian Church to provide wholesome, innocent, instruct- 
ive plays for the people, or to encourage it in some way or other, as to provide 
them bread." 

As the Church thus came to that weary multitude who yearn 
in heart for Christian sympathy, who are mutely asking for 
the Healer of men ; as it told them of the Better Land and 
the Rest that remaineth ; as it spoke this, not through a hired 
agent, but from the convictions of a neighbor's faith, and from 
the love of a neighbor's heart, would it not speak with power? 
Do not the poor especially appreciate religion when rightly 
presented ? Did not the multitudes throng around the Son 
of man? Did not the common people hear Him gladly? 

As with its food and clothes the Church came to the needy, 
what would they think of it ? A lady seeing a ragged little girl 
gazing wistfully into a baker's window, took the child in, gave 
her all the bread and cakes she could eat, and a large parcel to 
take home, and then put her own shawl around the little shiv- 



314 Divisions Hurt our Charity. 

ering shoulders ; the grateful creature looked up and said : 
" Are you God's wife ? " That is what the forlorn world would 
say as the Church came with its blessings ; it would say : 
*' Surely, this is the Bride, the Lamb's wife ! " 

HOW IT IS. 

Thus would our charity operate were the Christians of New 
York one Church according to Scripture ; but being divided, it 
works in a very different way. Storms gather in the moun- 
tains, but their fury is spent in the vale ; kings quarrel, but 
the common people fight the battles ; divines clash, and the 
brunt of the misfortune falls upon the poor. 

The sects, cramped for means, cling to the rich, and as the 
rich always go by themselves " up-town," the sects have to 
follow them. So we find in the rich quarters of the city, 
where there are 5,000 people to the square mile, a forest of 
spires; while in the poor quarters of the city, where there are 
50,000 people to the square mile, we find hardly any. 

And strange to tell, our sanctuaries are not only away from 
the mass of the people, but they were actually moved dcsN2.y from 
them. The dense portions of New York abound with livery- 
stables and theaters, the original meeting-houses of Christians 
who have retired to the sunny regions of wealth. One con- 
gregation which left the thick population of Houston Street and 
Broadway, for the thin population of upper Fifth Avenue, 
plainly said that if the people around should come into their 
sanctuary, they would go out ; so the Christians moved away 
to get rid of the sinners. 

Thus quit of the poor, the Church proceeds to build so as to 
keep them out forever. The trouble is, on account of her di- 
visions, the Church herself is poor ; poorer even on Fifth Ave- 
nue than God ever meant her to be. God is rich, and He 
never intended His Church to twist and turn for pennies. 
But the sect cannot command the resources of the Church ; 
so, to build and keep up at all, it goes into debt. About these 
debts, the New York Commerciat Advertiser remarks : 

" It is somewhat startling to learn that our city churches are mortgaged 
for about two and a half million dollars. How does this tally with the 
Scriptural injunction : ' Owe no man anything but to love one another ? ' " 

And the New York Evening Post said awhile ago : 

*' The list of church debts in New York and Brooklyn is appalling, and in 



Divisions Hui^t our Chainty. 315 

some sense humiliating also. We can count our fingers full of fine churches 
which have never been paid for, whose debts are so large that they could 
never carry them at all if they were secular instead of religious organizations ; 
and whose annual interest is an annual burden which paralyzes every effort 
to accompHsh the ends for which, in a large degree, churches are supposed 
to exist. We recently inspected a number of church buildings in company 
with an expert, and had him estimate the extreme market value of their 
grounds and buildings. In but one case was the property worth twice the 
sum for which it was mortgaged ; in four cases out of seven the debt was 
actually greater than the total market value of the property, and one of the 
four churches is mortgaged for nearly twice its actual value." 

A Chicago paper says : 

" The church debts of Chicago amount to $1,41 1,195 ! divided as follows : 
Presbyterian, $256,898; Congregational $214,115; Methodist, $169,783; 
Baptist, $133,099," etc. 

The income to pay the interest on these debts, and the sal- 
aries and other expenses, where does it come from ? From 
that very part which of all others should be kept sacred for a 
perishing world, X}i\^ pews. Dr. John Hall's people leave a re- 
gion of hotels and boarding-houses and move up near Central 
Park, and build the finest Presbyterian meeting-house in the 
country, costing a million of dollars. Is it too fine? Not at 
all ; 'it would not be too good for the Lord if it were ten times 
as handsome. It has 352 pews ; it ought to have a thousand ; 
but who are they for ? On Christian principles, they would 
advertise on the streets and in the papers, " Come, for all 
things are ready ; come, rich and poor ; take the wine and 
milk of the Gospel without money and without price, in the 
house we have built for you ! " But no. To put up this edi- 
fice they have run in debt, and to pay this debt they put on 
their pews a valuation of $800,000, which means eight hundred 
thousand obstructions to the penniless. And to inform any 
such who may be lingering about, that the principle is worldly 
finance and not Christian charity, they open the sanctuary with 
a meeting unknown to Scripture, an auction. The pews are 
rated from $6,000 apiece down. Mr. Alexander Stuart bids 
$1,500 to have the first choice, takes a $6,000 pew, pays 
$7,500, puts his name on his property, and occupies it himself. 
Mr. Robert L. Stuart bids $1,500 for the second choice, takes 
a $5,000 pew, puts his name on the property, and occupies it 
himself; and so on till all is appropriated; and then they put 



3i6 Divisions Htirt our Charity. 

on the pulpit a Book which says : '' To the poor the Gospel is 
preached." This being the model society of the denomina- 
tion, the others copy as far as they can. 

The evil grows. Having stifled her heart, the Church grows 
more and more selfish. The rich being intrenched in her sa- 
cred walls, study the gratification of their own tastes ; they estab- 
lish fashions of dress distinguishing them from the poor. '' How 
many Christians," asks the Rev. Mr. Snyder, of Pittsburg, 
'' spend an hour in devotional preparation for the sanctuary ? 
Not very many. And yet how many spend more time than 
that every Sunday morning in arranging their hoops and folds 
and ribbons for church ! " " Oh, it's not for the like of us to 
go to church ourselves," said a mechanic's wife, '' it's as much 
as we can do to dress our girl even with her class in Sunday- 
school." The usual title of our great city congregations is 
" fashionable churches ; " think of that, a fashionable church ! 
A poorly-dressed man standing at the door of one of them, 
and seeing the usher seating the well-dressed people and pass- 
ing him by, inquired of the sexton : " Can you tell me whose 
church this is } " " Yes, it is Christ's Church." " Is He in ? " 

THE IMPRESSION MADE. 

Now let us see the impression this makes on the world. 
Speaking of one of our up-town sanctuaries, the New York 
Times says : 

" None but its meanest seats can even be hired by persons under the 
magical ' ten thousand ' income. It is a costly cathedral for a few wealthy 
Protestants." 

Again, the same paper says : 

" In this city, the utter neglect by the wealthy Protestant churches of the 
means of worship among the poor, and their concentration of money in 
affording luxurious buildings to the rich, is most discreditable to their spirit 
and inconsistent with their professed faith. It is most damaging too to 
their influence. When a church becomes simply a means of luxurious sen- 
timent for a wealthy class, the masses will learn to despise and scoff at it." 

A Rochester paper remarks : 

" A man who cannot rent a pew has no right to be pious nowadays." 

Even a religious journal of New York recently said : 
" It has become a question whether any man with less income than 



Divisions Htirt our Charity. 317 

$5,000 a year can go to heaven from New York, presupposing that one 
must go there through our churches." 

From the careful and conservative Christian Weekly^ the 
organ of the American Tract Society, we take this extract : 

" The Church has become an aristocratic institution. The common peo- 
ple are not wanted, and do not come to its sanctuaries and services. Its 
pews are sold at auction, or rented at prices far beyond their reach. Its 
ministers have no congeniality with the people, and can approach them only 
with compassion and condescension. It is true we have mission chapels, 
but these are so many confessions that the Church, in its regular offices, 
has no provision for the people." 

It is still more important to hear what the poor themselves 
say, and if we examine the papers we shall see frequent let- 
ters from them about it. We give two specimens from the 
New York Herald : 

" To the Editor of the Herald : 

"The question is often asked, 'Why do not the lower orders go to 
church ? ' Will you permit a laboring man to state the reason of their 
non-attendance ? It is because of the want of sympathy on the part of the 
clergy toward the poor. The common people of Judea heard Christ gladly 
because He was one of themselves ; because He identified Himself with 
them, and because He constituted Himself their champion and friend. But 
our so-called spiritual teachers do not in the least resemble Christ, either in 
their hves, their character, or their preaching. If they did, we workingmen 
would be their principal adherents. Their tastes and sympathies are with 
the upper classes, with men and women whom the proletarians regard with 
suspicion, dislike, and enmity. Too many of the clergy go into the Church 
because it is a pleasant and agreeable occupation. It confers influence and 
an entree to what is called ' good society.' In fact, they take up religion 
as a trade. They are found ever looking for the good things of this life, 
and thus it is that the poor, comparing them with the lowly Carpenter of 
Nazareth, fail to recognize any Hkeness between them and that Master 
whose life they pretend to follow. In a word, the clergy fail to carry out 
the apostolic injunction, ' Mind not high things, but condescend to men of 
low estate.' 

" Did Christ seek to gather round Him, as many of our clergy do, a fash- 
ionable, wealthy congregation .'* No, He delighted in the society of social 
pariahs, in order that He might bring them to God, while he denounced in 
scathing terms the leaders of fashion and the whole privileged class of 
Judea. Take many of the churches in Europe and America : what is the 
service but a sham, a mere travesty on Christianity, a social club of selfish 
rich men and frivolous women. Let the clergy stand forth and espouse, 
like Christ, the cause of the oppressed, ill-paid, despised workers of this 
and all other lands. Let them hurl the thunders of God's wrath on the 



31 8 Divisions Htud our Charity, 

crying sins and iniquities of the age, on the vulgar ostentation of the rich, 
on the prevaiUng worship of Mammon. 

" T. STOYLES SANDERS." 

Here we notice the selfishness induced by our divisions is 
unfairly visited upon the clergy. The other article is in better 
spirit, and in the third paragraph approaches the real difficulty : 

" To the New York Herald : 

" Being a church-goer and a behever in religious worship, I might, though 
but a poor, uneducated laborer, show why many people absent themselves 
from church on Sundays and other days. 

"First. The great majority of the people in the city are poor ; and poor 
and ragged people, no matter how honest or how pious, are not desirable 
in any of our fashionable churches. 

''Second. The clergymen of every denomination seem to be more bent on 
good living, building costly edifices, dressing extravagantly, and paying 
homage to riches, no matter how acquired, than in instructing the ignorant, 
reclaiming the depraved, or going out in quest of the strayed or stolen of 
their flocks. 

" Third. Each and every one of our Christian preachers would fain make 
the people believe that he, and he alone, is able to point out the sure road 
to heaven. Knowing that all cannot be right, and not knowing which is, 
if any, a great many refrain from going to any place of worship, and offer 
up their prayers direct to God, confident that He alone can neither deceive 
nor be deceived. This feeling I know to be gaining ground among the 
laboring class, who are capable of thinking more than they get credit for, 
and who know well enough the difference between sham and real religion. 

" A LABORER." 

However roughly or extravagantly expressed, there is in 
these articles what the Church will heed when she is con- 
verted. 

The same process is going on in all our large cities. In 
Boston, seven of the old historic societies have removed from 
the densely populated part of the city to the wealthy section 
called the " Back Bay," and have there erected sumptuous 
edifices at a cost of $2,000,000 ; and while the public halls, 
such as Music Hall and Tremont Temple, frequently turn 
away hundreds from their doors, these Back Bay congrega- 
tions are usually restricted and small. Speaking of this, the 
Springfield Republican says : 

" In his wrestle with the Church militant, the old adversary never got a 
better hold than by inducing one after another of the sturdy Puritan 
churches, like the old South, to wrap themselves in purple and fine linen, 
and sit down in self-complacent ease in magnificent, and probably, mort- 



Divisions Hurt our Charity. 319 

gag"ed sanctuaries, to pillow their heads on ancient and godly recollections. 
A half a million of dollars, with the interest thereof, thus abstracted from 
the strenuous warfare of the good fight ; the certainty that the poor will 
not have the Gospel preached to them in, or anywhere near these palatial 
churches ; the general probability that those who are rich enough to need 
the Gospel will not be able to hear it on account of acoustic infelicities ; 
the difficulty, moreover, of finding the Chrysostom silver-mouthed and 
commanding enough in presence to match the. edifice and at the same time 
lift the mortgage ; these things, altogether, invite the arch deceiver to put 
in his own appearance among the sons of God, and enjoy his chuckle. 

" Imagine such men as Moody or Wesley attempting to ply their simple, 
but efficient methods in such surroundings. They have too much of com- 
mon sense, of the enthusiasm of humanity, of a divine experience, to make 
the attempt. Tabernacles, rinks, depots, anywhere but in a metropolitan 
church of the magnificent order. How many preachers, who have been 
mighty spiritual forces, rulers of the people, have been swaddled in silk 
gowns and perched upon upholstered pulpits, cribbed and confined by ele- 
gant circumstances, their zeal repressed and their magnetism polarized, by 
all the non-conducting qualities of an aristocratic and fashionable family 
church ! " 

Even the heathen are aware that this sort of thing is incon- 
sistent with true religion. Cicero declaimed against wealth 
usurping the seats of religion, and in his book, ^' De LegibusJ' 
says : 

" Do we wish that the poor should have equal rights with the rich before 
human laws, and yet seek to exclude them from free access to the gods by 
rendering religious rites too costly for them to engage in, while we know 
how displeasing to God it is that access to Him in worship should not be 
open to all } " 

And the celebrated Brahmin, Rammohun Roy, once, while 
visiting England, said at a breakfast-table to Dr. Raffles : 
" You say that you are all one in Christ, all brethren, and 
equal in Him ; and yet you have seats lined with crimson for 
the rich, and bare benches for the poor — how is that ? " 

CHARITY THROUGH AGENTS. 

The Church having separated from the poor, tries to repair 
the wrong by sending deputies to them. This is not the Gos- 
pel method 

Christian love shares the misery it would help. Christ did 
not stay in heaven and superintend our salvation ; He came 
down, became a man, and identified Himself with us. In the 



320 Divisions Httrt ou7^ Charity. 

old slavery times, certain Moravian missionaries went to one 
of the West India islands to preach, and finding access to the 
slaves impossible except they became slaves themselves, sold 
themselves into perpetual bondage for that purpose. It is on 
record that two holy men, pitying the neglected lepers confined 
in a lazar-house, went in to instruct and comfort them, know- 
ing that they would never be allowed to come out again. That 
was full-blown Christian charity. 

We do not read of St. Paul, housed among the elite, scratch- 
ing his head with the pearl-handle of his gold pen, and wri- 
ting to his brother apostle : " Dear Doctor Simon Peter, how 
shall we reach the masses?" He lived among them, wrought 
at one of their trades, and spoke to them as a fellow. And 
the mission of Christianity to-day is not to live in palaces and 
send agents to the poor, but to go itself into their lanes and 
alleys and up their foul stair-cases, and breathe the air they 
breathe and eat the food they eat. A Christian gentleman 
out West understood the point. He was persuading a rough 
little boy to the Sabbath-school. " I've got no Bible," said 
the urchin. " I'll give you one," said the gentleman. " I've 
got no shoes." " You can go barefoot, then." " I will, if you 
will," said the boy. '' Agreed ! " replied the gentleman ; and 
off went his shoes and stockings into his pocket, and with the 
boy he went barefoot to school. The boy was captured, of 
course ; he attended regularly ; was converted, and became 
an eminent missionary to the Sandwich Islands. Associations 
and organizations are good things, and necessary things ; but 
after all, the real thing which tells upon the human heart is 
the personal ministry of the converted Christian. 

This shows why our Mission Chapels have proved such fail- 
ures. A rich congregation whose own pews are perhaps not 
half occupied, builds a chapel off somewhere for the poor, on 
the principle that the two classes should be kept separate. 
The idea is un-American and un-Christian. " To-day," said 
the Saviour to the penitent thief, ^' thou shalt be with me in 
Paradise ; " and He never meant that the rich Christian, with a 
thousand-dollar premium, should purchase a pew in an elegant 
sanctuary, and send the poor Christian off to worship in bare 
walls. " The rich and poor meet together," says the Scrip- 
ture ; " the Lord is the Maker of them all." Says Dr. Chal- 
mers : " If poverty must live in the cheerless tenement, why 



Divisions Hurt oiu^ Charity. 321 

not give it the best to see and enjoy in the House of God ? 
If it must grind at the mill of toil all the week, why not greet 
and rest it on the Lord's day with the choicest gifts of music 
and art?" The Rev. Dr. Hepworth, speaking on this point, 
says : 

" There ought to be some place in the land where we are made to feel, 
no matter how lofty our social position, that we are no better than others, 
and where we shall be encouraged to feel, if we work for a living until our 
hands are seamed and grained, that we are just as good as others. The 
Church ought to take hold of both ends of society with its two hands, and 
drawing them close together on Sunday tell them that the time will come 
when he alone shall be accounted rich who is good and true, and he alone 
shall be known to be poor whose heart is neither warm nor kind. 

" The trouble with us is, that instead of sheering off from the European 
highway of caste, we are edging toward the old ruts. 

" The only institution that can check this tendency is the Church. But 
the Church encourages it. Yes, too true. We have half-million palaces 
for the wealthy to say their prayers in, and buildings not as comfortable as 
these favored ones' stables for the poor to seek religion in. The Church 
of America is aristocratic in fact, and its tendencies are to grow more so." 

The Rev. D. R. Thomason, a venerable Presbyterian clergy- 
man of New York, speaks very strongly on the matter. He 
says : 

" Some time ago, in conversation with a member of the editorial staff of 
one of our popular secular journals, I remarked that our wealthy ecclesias- 
tical societies were vieing with one another to see who should build the 
most costly churches and gather the wealthiest congregations. ' Yes,' said 
he, ' and that will be hell to New York.' This was strong language, but 
there is much truth in it. 

" Hiring mission rooms, building mission chapels, and providing an un- 
educated ministry for the poor that they may worship apart from the rich — 
is not this mocking God } He is no respecter of persons, and He will not 
have His poor (many of them rich in faith) thus treated. Money may be 
expended on them to prodigality ; lay colleges may be established, and 
fledgling teachers sent out in flocks. The spiritual crumbs fromi the rich 
man's table may cover the floor and aflbrd an ample repast for all the hum- 
ble poor that will stoop to gather the supply. But the Master of the feast 
will not have His humble guests thus treated. Called to the wedding feast 
from the high-way and hedges though they may be, they must be seated 
with the rich at the banquet table, and wear the common wedding 
garment." 

We need not argue the question, however, for the masses 
have very conclusively settled it for themselves. They refuse 
21 



322 Divisions Hurt our Charity. 

to come to these pauper establishments. The poor will not 
be herded off by themselves. They take no interest in sanc- 
tuaries built and operated for themselves as a class, built by 
mere money. They want us, not our money ; they want us, 
not our second-hand clothes or Sunday-school books or pity ; 
they want ms to come and show them how to live, and how to 
economize, and how to amuse themselves, and how to sing 
and pray ; and if we cannot bring Christianity to them in this 
way, flowing from a brother's hand and beaming from a broth- 
er's eye, then we can leave them alone, they do not want our 
money or our missionaries. 

CHARITY IN CONFUSION. 

Being divided, and having no general system in distributing 
our charities, they are confused — deficient in many quarters, 
and overlapping in others. It is mortifying, after all our com- 
placent speeches and voluminous reports, to find that a great 
part of our gifts is wasted ; but it is true. In our early minis- 
try, as assistant to the Church of the Epiphany, Philadelphia, 
we had to disburse the communion offerings for the poor, 
amounting to about-a thousand dollars per year; but so hard 
did we find it to reach the really deserving, and so imposed 
upon were we by over-fed and professional paupers, that we 
concluded at last it would have done -more good to have 
turned over all this money to the regular charity department 
of the city government, which was conducted with an eye to 
the whole field, and on the principles of common sense. 

A tricky family can easily manage, by dividing up among 
our congregations, to receive regular aid from several of them, 
and thus live in idleness. The extent to which this is carried 
on may be seen from a statement once made by the Rev. Dr. 
John Hall, that there were twenty thousand persons in New 
York City who were supported by this misdirected charity. 
An item from the Christian Intelligencer is interesting reading 
just here : 

" We know of a case in which a mother and her sister, her daughter and 
her son-in-law, were furnished with a good suite of rooms, handsomely fitted 
up, with more than simply decent clothing, and with a well-ordered table 
by the pitiful supplications of the aged sister, who made frequent and regu- 
lar visits to a certain set of offices down-town. This was spoken of in the 
family as * going down to the bank to draw a little deposit.' This source of 



Divisions Hurt our Charity, 323 

income not being deemed sufficient 1?o meet the wants of the son-in-law, a 
'retired lawyer,' who was a little fastidious in the matter of dressing-gowns, 
slippers, and cigars, a strike was made on a new set of givers. The matter 
was referred, by one of the latter, to a faithful city visitor of the poor, who 
called, reported, and the result was, not only no new gifts, but even ' the 
bank ' before mentioned suspended payment, and the young man was actu- 
ally driven to the cruel alternative of going to work or going hungry." 

A Boston paper states that " sixty-three per cent, of all the 
persons that applied for assistance at the various benevolent 
institutions of that city, during one year, were professional 
swindlers or beggars or impostors of some sort." 

It is plain that if we do not mean to throw our money 
away, but really wish it to reach the right hands and relieve 
the actual privation and misery around us, we must go back 
to the Scriptural organization of " The Church of New York" 
and work, each Christian with his own hand and heart in his 
allotted sphere, and all together as one Body in the Lord. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR TESTIMONY. 

" God speed the day of prophecy, 

When Christians all are one ; 
Let Jesus' prayer ascend the air, 

And Jesus' will be done. 
The Church with schisms and strife within, 

The world in unbelief and sin, 
God bring the Golden Era in, 

When Christians all are one." 

— REV. E. P. MARVIN. 
THE SURE EVIDENCE. 

Men long for the solace and repose of true religion. When 
a religion evidently comes from God they grasp at it ; and a 
sure evidence of that is when it produces universal, unselfish 
love. For that is not natural. When we walk in our gardens, 
we find the plants to be voracious eaters and drinkers, each 
one seeking to occupy its neighbor's ground and feed upon 
its nutriment. The blushing rose is really a gladiator; the 
lily, so pure and white, is implacable, and even the violet is 
greedy for itself. The meadows are battle-fields, where heed- 
less of beauty or grace, vigorous and lusty roots strangle their 
feeble brethren, and flower up in the pride of victory. There 
are armies and invasions of grasses ; the weeds contest every 
inch of the ground, and the forest trees strive for the sunlight 
over the tops of each other. Nature is a scene of vegetable 
and animal warfare. 

So it is among men — all over the troubled earth is rivalry 
and contention ; in trade, in politics, in society, there is strug- 
gle for precedence, each one looking out for himself at the 
expense of his neighbor. 

Wearied by this everlasting conflict, the heart searches for 
a resting-place of peace and love. Were the Church such a 
refuge, its gates would be thronged by wayfarers, crying : 
(324) 



Divisi07is Hurt our Testimony, 325 

" People of the living God, 

I have sought the world around, 
Paths of sin and sorrow trod, 

Peace and comfort nowhere found ; 
Now to you my spirit turns, 

Turns a fugitive unblest ; 
Brethren, where your altar burns, 

Oh, receive me into rest ! " 

For affection and charity that can go beyond self and fam- 
ily and party and country is above nature ; it is from heaven 
and did the Church show it, she would prove herself divine. 

This was the reason of the wonderful growth of the Early 
Church. Lucian, a Greek writer of the second century, op- 
posed to the Christians, thus wrote concerning them : 

" It is incredible what pains and diligence they use by all means to succor 
one another. They have an extreme contempt of the things of this world. 
Their legislator made them believe that they are all brethren, and since 
they have renounced our religion and worshiped their crucified leader, they 
live according to his laws, and all their riches are common." 

And Neander says of the primitive disciples : 

" The names. Brother and Sister, which the Christians gave to each other, 
were not names without meaning. The fraternal kiss — with which ever)' 
one after being baptized was received into the community by the Christians, 
into whose immediate fellowship he entered, and which the members be- 
stowed on each other just before the celebration of the communion, and with 
which every Christian saluted his brother, though he had never seen him 
before — was not an empty form ; but the expression of Christian feeling, a 
token of the relation into which Christians considered themselves as stand- 
ing to each other." 

Men longed to join a church like that. They sought it 
though it worshiped in dens and caves ; they sought it though 
at the sacrifice of all their worldly possessions, yea, even of 
life itself. ''Jesus is from God, for His people are united and 
love one another ;" that was the simple, but resistless argument. 

And it is an argument just as strong to-day as ever. For 
bad as the world is, it does not hate piety ; it hates party 
spirit and lust of power when it is veiled under the garb of 
piety ; it hates cant and hypocrisy, and advertisers and quacks 
in piety, who in the name of religion seek only to advance 
themselves and their clan ; but when they see that modest and 
gentle piety, which fills the heart with kindness and makes a man 



326 Divisions Hurt our Testimony. 

forgiving and tolerant, they are drawn to it irresistibly. Two 
prominent gentlemen living in the same town were bitter ene- 
mies, but a revival occurring, they were both converted with- 
out being aware of what had happened to each other. Thus 
unadvised, they met at a union gathering, when immediately 
they rushed into each other's arms, exclaiming : '' My Brother ! 
My Brother ! " That scene spread the revival far and wide ; it 
had more effect than a thousand sermons. The noted Evan- 
gelist, Rev. A. B. Earle, in speaking on this subject, says : 

" A well-known gambler in Massachusetts was brought to Christ through 
just this influence, and said to me : * Mr. Earle, wherever you go, tell the world 
of my conversion ; tell them I could withstand the appeals of each denomi- 
nation when they worked separately, but when they united in a meeting, 
and I saw the spirit of love prevailing among them, I felt its power, and 
gave myself to the Saviour.' 

" A talented physician, who had advocated infidel sentiments for many 
years, came into one of our meetings on the Pacific coast, and publicly 
made this statement : ' For the last four years I have been convinced that 
there was no real foundation for infidelity ; and when I looked upon the 
different denominations, often speaking unkindly of each other, and refusing 
to work together for the salvation of souls, I felt there was about as little 
in the churches to rest upon. But when I attended this union meeting, and 
saw the brotherly love manifested, then I felt there was a reality in religion, 
and that I needed it. Nothing seemed to reach me until I felt the power of 
this union of denominations.' " 

RATIO OF CONVERTS DECLINING. 

Sitting in our cushioned pews, listening to delightful music 
and finished sermons, it is hard to realize that the Church is 
in a bad way ; but it certainly is as to its influence over the 
masses. Dr. John Hall says that in England people are di- 
vided into Churchmen and Dissenters, but in this country they 
might properly be divided into Churchmen and Absenters. 

These Absenters ! A preacher once very impressively said, 
that " often when looking down from the pulpit on the up- 
turned faces of his people, he saw another, vaster congrega- 
tion, beyond the sound of his voice — the great multitude, who 
stood and stared in the distance, unapproaching and unap- 
proachable, neVer coming within his reach." There is no ear- 
nest preacher who is not frequently haunted by the same 
vision. Seventy thousand pulpits in our land are occupied 
for the most part by our best and wisest men, and yet mil- 



Divisions Hurt oicr Testimony. 327 

lions do not care to hear them. Our sanctuaries could not 

seat half our population, yet half their seats are empty. 

Worse than this — the proportion of our people away from 

our churches is constantly enlarging. The Rev. Dr. E. D. 

Mansfield published the following statistics on the matter : 

1850. i860. 1870. 

Churches 38,061 54,000 63,082 

Accommodations 14,234,825 19,128,751 21,665,062 

People unprovided for 8,957,051 12,314,470 16,398,309 

Increase of Increase of 

Population. Non-goers. 

From 1850 to i860 33 per cent. 40 per cent. 

From i860 to 1870 24 per cent. 100 per cent. 

The last line shows that the " absenters " are increasing four 
times faster than the number of the people. 

The reports from our great cities corroborate this. At a 
Methodist preachers' meeting in New York some years ago, 
the Rev. C. C. Goss gave the result of a careful survey of that 
denomination. The sum of it was that while in the year 1855 
there were forty Methodist congregations in the Metropolis, in 
the year 1870 there were only thirty-nine ; and as to member- 
ship, there had been but a trifling increase for twenty-five 
years — and this during a period in which the city had doubled 
its population. 

As to the Presbyterian denomination in New York, a cor- 
respondent of the Presbyterian gives the following information : 

"There are three facts which can be easily verified by statistics. First, 
the positive number of Presbyterian and Reformed churches (leaving out of 
view our mission chapels) is no greater now than it was twenty-five years 
ag'^. Secondly, the relative strength of our churches, as compared with the 
population, is a hundred per cent, less than it was twenty-five years ago. 
And thirdly, the most alarming of all, we have been steadily losing our hold 
upon what are called the middle classes of society, the plain and respectable 
people of moderate incomes." 

The other evangelical denominations show about the same 
condition. When New York was fenced in by Wall Street, 
and was ruled by the Dutch Governors, it had a larger propor- 
tion of Christians than it has now. 

So elsewhere. A committee of the Presbyterian Synod of 
Cincinnati reported to that body some time ago that one of 
the largest and most zealous of the evangelical denominations 



328 Divisions Hurt our Testimony, 

there, had made a net increase of only two members in the 
preceding ten years, and that the proportion of orthodox 
Christians to the entire population had for years been steadily 
declining. It is the same in Great Britain. Says one of our 
most reliable public journals : 

" For years past there has been in England a growing alienation of the 
working people, the trained artisans of the manufacturing towns especially, 
not merely from the Church, but from Christianity itself. The influence 
which the Church once had over this part of the population has been almost 
wholly lost. The great majority of the hand-workers in the towns neither 
believe her teachings nor attend her services. They look upon the priest as 
the natural enemy of their class — to be aboHshed when the day of deliverance 
comes, and to be disliked in the meantime." 

It deepens the discouragement to know that the additions 
we do have come from the training of our own children rather 
than from our influence on the impenitent around. A noted New 
York pastor said that in his pastorate of forty years, nine-tenths 
of the additions to his church were secured through his Sun- 
day-school. We read about the early triumphs of the Cross, 
and how the scoffers wilted down before it ; but we have long 
since ceased to expect that sort of thing among us. We turn 
around to our little ones and try to save them from the in- 
coming flood of unbelief, and let the great world perish in its 
sin. In view of all this, can we sit content in our pews because 
they are cushioned? 

WHAT IS THE MATTER.? 

The Church is all furnished for going, but it doesn't go. 
Like a locomotive on icy rails, the pistons work and the 
wheels go round, but the train stands still. There is no hold. 
W^e do not grip the public mind. We make parade of the 
monies we raise, and yet while three million dollars are annu- 
ally expended in support of the denominations in New York, 
forty millions are spent every year in its grog-shops. The 
people are sorrowful at heart; troubles of the present and 
dread of the future press heavily upon them ; where do they 
go for solace? There are 470 sanctuaries on Manhattan 
Island and 8,440 dram-shops. There is a sanctuary to every 
two thousand people, and a saloon to every one hundred and 
thirty. The sanctuaries are open two or three times a week, 
the saloons every day, all day and sometimes all night. 



Divisions Hurt our Testiino7ty. 329 

Stroll of an evening along the streets and see the crowds 
flocking into the theaters and " gardens." Stand on a sum- 
mer Sabbath morning at the wharves and see the line of ex- 
cursion steamers on their way to the suburban resorts for 
drinking and dancing. Over two thousand people frequently 
crowd on one of these boats. That tells where the multitudes 
go for comfort. In pleasant weather there are often twice as 
many people during church hours, in Central Park or on Coney 
Island, as in all the sanctuaries of the city. 

In delivering an installation charge in Boston, the venerable 
Dr. Webb once remarked : 

" The Boston public, as now constituted, had rather read Sunday papers 
than hear sermons. The authority of the Bible is questioned, and the Ten 
Commandments no longer stand at the head of the ethical code. Concert 
halls are better filled than churches, and the public are about ready for 
Sunday night theaters and concerts on the Common." 

Grip on the public mind ! Why, a Cincinnati pastor not 
long ago said in a sermon that " he was told by a politician 
of that city, that he would rather have the influence of one 
saloon in his favor on any question before the people than the 
influence of the largest church in the city." 

What is the matter? Has our message weakened or lost 
its point ? Oh, not at all. The fault is not with our testimony, 
but with us. A city missionary, once describing a neglected 
boy, said : " He was so very dirty that there was only one clean 
spot about him, and that was his eye ! " However bemuddled 
the world may be in its doctrine or practice, one thing about 
it is always bright, and that is its eye ; and that eye is fixed 
on us. The world judges Christianity by the Church. To 
one sinner who reads the Bible, there are forty who read pro- 
fessing Christians. 

And what does the world see ? It sees the Church rent 
into discordant parties, and each appealing to it in different 
voice. '' See," says one, " the glory of this temple of ours, 
so ancient and stately, having all things made after the pat- 
tern shown in the Mount ! " " See," exclaims another, " our 
beautiful sanctuary, our sound doctrine, our primitive sim- 
plicity ! " *' Behold," shouts a third, '' how zealous v/e are, 
and how many converts we make ! " '' Notice," speaks a 
fourth, "■ how closely we follow every direction of the law." 



330 Divisions Hurt our Testimony. 

'' Go round about our Zion/' cries a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, 
" mark well her bulwarks and the towers thereof, and say 
whether this be not the very city of God." 

It is in Chicago, perhaps : the world sees four Christian 
bishops presiding over the Church there — the Episcopal, Re- 
formed Episcopal, Methodist, and Romish, not one of whom 
recognizes the jurisdiction of another ; besides a score of 
other sects who do not recognize any of them. What hap- 
pens ? Bewildered by the din, the world turns on its heel 
and leaves them all alone. There may be eloquence and 
pathos and learning, but the public is not convinced. Were 
the Twelve Apostles to go to Chicago in that way, setting up 
twelve discordant churches, the people would hear none of 
them. 

We heard a prominent lawyer of New York once say, " The 
great obstacle in the way of Christianity to-day is the Church." 
What a strange remark that was ! Yet that man is a devout 
and orthodox professor of religion. Says the Rev. W. W. 
Dow : 

" When one professor of religion is very thankful that he is a Methodist, 
and another that he is a CongregationaHst, and another that he is a Baptist, 
and another that he is something else, it is very Hable to make an ungodly 
outsider thankful that he is neither. And he not only disdains all the socie- 
ties because of the party spirit that he sees so dominant, but he disdains 
also the Saviour, the Head of the real Church. He will have nothing to do 
with a cause that admits of such confusion and division among its adher- 
ents." 

At an Episcopal gathering once. Bishop Whipple, of Min- 
nesota, said : 

" We feel in the West like the man who had lost his way on the trackless 
prairie, and after wandering about in hardship and misery for many days, 
came at last to a place where there had been set up twelve different sign- 
boards, each bearing the legend, ' This is the way home.' And the man 
looked from one to the other until he began to doubt whether he really had any 
home at all, or if there was any way of getting there, until hope was almost 
eaten out of his heart. I believe our divisions are eating all faith out of 
the American heart." 

While the first State Convention of Pennsylvania was tedi- 
ously and bitterly debating over their Constitution, old Ben- 
jamin Franklin, who had long been a silent observer of the 
wrangle, at last arose and said : " Gentlemen, I would call 



Divisions Hurt our Testimony. 331 

your attention to the fact that while we are here in a state of 
anarchy, the people are conducting their affairs as usual. 
Take care ! If our disputes continue much longer, they may 
find out they can do without us ! " That is just what has hap- 
pened with us. We have so long hung on to our quarrels 
that the people have let go of us altogether. 

TONE OF DECISION LOST. 

The scribes and lawyers among the Jews were skillful in 
suggestion and argument, but Jesus, we are told, '' spoke as 
one having authority, and not as the scribes." He proclaimed 
the multitude guilty and condemned, and commanded them 
to come unto Him and be saved. He did not debate with 
His disciples, but said to them directly, '' Follow me." The 
Athenians were constantly discussing knotty problems, but 
when Paul stood in the midst of Mars'-hill, he spoke in a dif- 
ferent way : " God now commandeth all men everywhere to 
repent." Such should be the tone of the Church now. It 
should speak, not as a disputant, but as the mouth-piece of 
the Great Judge. It should declare an established fact. 
When skaters are near a hole in the ice, we do not suggest 
or argue, but cry out, '' Away- from there ! Danger ! " 

That tone the world attends to. It may obey, or it may 
persecute, but it is never indifferent. It has been the tone of 
every great preacher around whom the multitudes have cried 
to God for mercy. The students of Kenyon College years 
ago, were many of them addicted to profanity. The profes- 
sors lectured about it in the class-rooms and argued against 
it from the pulpit, but still the evil grew. Bishop Mcllvaine, 
then residing at Gambler, took up the matter. Preaching 
from the third commandment, he showed the awful nature of 
the sin, and, finally, raising his tall form to its full height, he 
exclaimed, with impassioned earnestness, " And now, as the 
ambassador of Almighty God, I command you not to take 
His name in vain ! " The guilty students cowered under the 
stroke, and the evil abated from that hour. 

This voice from the Master is all gone through our divis- 
ions. The world understands our denominations as preaching 
different gospels ; it makes no nice discriminations ; from the 
simple fact of the different names and different creeds, it con- 



2,^2 Divisions Hurt our Testimony. 

eludes that the Bible is not clear, the existence of hell is not 
certain, salvation through Christ is merely a tenet which some 
hold, and the Church, while a very excellent thing for society 
perhaps, is not at all a matter of life and death. 

Half the time when the world does go to church it pays no 
attention. We cut this significant item from one of our relig- 
ious journals : 

** In one of our large churches, there sat from Sabbath to Sabbath a 
tradesman of respectable position in life. He came as many others come ; 
he went as many others may go. For some fourteen years he was ' a con- 
stant hearer,' so the officials said. 

" This man was sick, and was in view of death, when a minister called 
to see him, and inquired into his state of mind. He was unconverted ; and, 
more than this, he was in the dark. When urged to seek for pardon, and 
not to rest until he knew his sins forgiven, he expressed great surprise. He 
did not know that it was possible. 

" ' Not know that it is possible ! Have you not attended church } ' 

" ' Yes,' was the reply ; ' but I do not know that I ever heard a sermon.' 
" ' What do you mean ? You have regularly sat there for some fourteen 
years, and not heard a sermon } How can that be ? ' 

" ' Why,' said he, ' the truth is this : as soon as the preacher took his text, 
I oegan to think of my business ; and I acquired such a habit of abstrac- 
tion, that while the preacher was preaching I could trace out on the panel 
of the seat before me all the vvork of the past week, and having reviewed 
that, could lay all my plans for the week to come. And the consequence 
is, that I do not know that I ever heard a sermon.' " 

Even when it does listen, the world hears the preacher 
critically. It considers him a candidate for public favor, as 
an advocate of his party, his side of the question. Over every 
statement it throws the wet blanket — '' That is what he and 
his sect believe." And so, all the force, the pressure, the 
stringency of the message, as a call from heaven, is dissipated. 

One pleasant Sabbath morning not long ago, we attended 
an elegant sanctuary in Lafayette Place, New York, and heard 
an excellent sermon. The edifice could hold a thousand peo- 
ple, but only about eighty were there. Within five minutes' 
walk were immense hotels and boarding-houses with people 
enough to fill that building and the street on which it stood 
from end to end. Why did they not come ? Before going to 
church that morning we asked an acquaintance to accompany 
us. " Well, no, he was obliged to us ; but he would prefer 
not. The fact was, he didn't understand the Bible, and didn't 
believe any one else did ; its best friends were all at logger- 



Divisions Hurt our Testimony, 2)ZZ 

heads about it ; men equally learned and sincere came to dif- 
ferent conclusions, and he didn't care about getting into the 
muddle." 

At our ministers' meetings there is continual discussion as 
to how we may fill our churches. One says we must have 
better preaching ; another that we must have better music ; 
another that the mode of service should be more popular; 
another that more hospitality should be shown, etc., etc. All 
wide of the mark. We may double pad our cushions, get 
extra prima donnas for our choirs, and put our whole avail- 
able force at the gates as a corps of invitation, but we will 
not draw mankind till we stop our divisions and speak with 
united and commanding voice. We have the Lord's own 
word for it : " That they may be one, that the world may 
believe." 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

To better appreciate the subject, let us look at a few in- 
stances in particular. And first let us consider the case of 
Benjamin Franklin : 

It is a very notable thing that this great and good man 
should never have made a profession of religion. For, he was 
trained by holy parents in the true faith ; was active in every 
benevolent enterprise of his day ; was the intimate friend and 
supporter of George Whitefield ; was one of the trustees of 
the Union Tabernacle built in Philadelphia by the admirers 
of that noble evangelist ; was the projector of a '^ United Party 
for Virtue^' based on the principles of ^' belief in God, in 
providence, in prayer, in the immortality of the soul, and 
present and future rewards and punishments ; " was faithful 
enough to write to Thomas Paine, when shown the manu- 
script of the " Age of Reason " : " Burn it, before it is seen 
by any other person. Don't unchain the tiger. If men are 
so wicked with religion, what would they be without it ?" and 
was the first in the Convention that framed the Constitution 
of the United States to move that prayers be offered to 
Heaven for assistance in their deliberations. Why did such 
a man never join the Church? The reason may be gathered 
from some items in his Autobiography : 

" My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, 
most of which I read. I have often regretted that at a time when I had 
such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way." 



334 Divisions Hurt 010^ Testimony. 

Speaking of his boyhood companion, John Collins, he says: 

" We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument, and very- 
desirous of confuting one another ; I had caught this by reading my father's 
books of dispute on religion." 

Notice now the inevitable result : 

" My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me 
through my childhood piously ; but I was scarce fifteen, when after doubt- 
ing by turns several points, as I found them disputed in the different books 
I read, I began to doubt of the Revelation itself." 

After removing to Philadelphia, he says : 

" I had been religiously educated a Presbyterian, and I regularly paid my 
annual subscription for the support of the only Presbyterian minister we 
had in Philadelphia. This minister used to admonish me to attend his 
ministrations, and I was now and then prevailed on to do so, once for five 
Sundays successively ; but his discourses were chiefly either polemic argu- 
ments, or explications of the peculiar doctrines of our sect, and were all to 
me very dry and unedifying, their aim seeming to be to rather make us Pres- 
byterians than good citizens." 

That tells the whole story. In that critical day of our 
Church and country, we drove from us this leading mind by 
our sectarian disputes. 

Let us take the case of another Philadelphian — 

STEPHEN GIRARD. 

The richest man of his day in America, strict and unbend- 
ing in business affairs, we are apt to think of Stephen Girard 
as a mere cold-blooded financier. We mistake — when Phila- 
delphia lay under its terrible visitation of yellow fever; when 
a panic seized the citizens which overslaughed natural affec- 
tion ; parents escaping from their dying children, Stephen 
Girard stayed in the city ; searched out the perishing in their 
forsaken homes ; bore them, reeking with black vomit, in his 
own arms to the hospital ; made that charnel-house his home 
by night and day, and shamed the frightened populace back 
to their duty. 

But as to his religion ? In the city of Bordeaux, where his 
youth was passed, he had been a personal witness of the cor- 
ruption of the Papal priesthood, so prevalent in France before 
the revolution. In America, he fixed that one eye of his, 



Divisions Hurt our Testimony. 335 

which could see so far, upon the various Protestant sects he 
found clamoring around him. No student of books, he scru- 
tinized all the closer what came under his notice. Philadel- 
phia was then rapidly starting its sectarian enterprises, and 
Girard indiscriminately gave to them all. Hardly a day but 
some clergyman appeared at the bank to ask money for his 
new building. 

Little did these clergymen know the impression they were 
making on the sagacious old millionaire before them. What- 
ever Christian brotherhood existed around there half a century 
ago, precious little of it was exhibited in Girard's bank. He 
saw them depreciating each other's efforts, crowding each 
other out of choice locations, and outvieing each other's edi- 
fices in costliness and beauty. 

Girard never heard any of these clergymen preach. He never 
darkened the doors of one of the sacred structures he helped 
to build. His judgment was wholly formed from the jealousies 
and discord he saw in his own counting-room ; and the con- 
sequence was one of the most cutting thrusts the ministry of 
Christ has ever received. At last, the old man is laid in his 
tomb, and the document opened in which he bequeathes his 
wealth. Two millions of dollars does he give to establish in 
Philadelphia a College for orphans. The object is grand, the 
sum is princely — and then come these strange clauses : 

" I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any 
sect whatsoever shall ever hold or exercise any station in the said College ; 
nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor 
within the premises appropriated to the purposes of said College. 

" In making this restriction I do not mean to cast any reflection upon 
any sect or person whatsoever. But, as there is such a multitude of sects, 
and such a diversity of opinion among them, I desire to keep the tender 
minds of the orphans who are to derive advantage from this bequest from 
the excitement which clashing doctrines and sectarian controversy are apt 
to produce. My desire is that all the instructors and teachers in the Col- 
lege shall take pains to instill into the minds of the scholars the purest 
principles of morality, so that upon their entrance into active life they shall 
form inclinations and habits that shall evince benevolence toward their fel- 
low-creatures, and a love of truth, sobriety, and industry. 

" Adopting at the same time such religious tenets as their matured rea- 
son may enable them to prefer." 

Before this terrible rebuke we are dumb. What can we 
say ? That Girard was hard-hearted ? What, then, did his 



^;^6 Divisions Hurt our Testimony, 

conduct in the pestilence mean, and his continual donations, 
and his munificent gift to the fatherless ? That he was an in- 
fidel? No proof of that; he says nothing against the intro- 
duction of the Bible, or of pious men (William H. Allen was 
at the same time President of Girard College and President 
of the American Bible Society; the institution is not a god- 
less concern by any means). No ; the simple fact is — this 
was the impression made upon a purely business man by our 
sectarian system. It filled him with disgust, and he walled 
up his orphans against it with language so strong that even 
the eloquence of Daniel Webster failed to shake it in the 
least. 

Clergymen stand at a distance and gaze upon Girard Col- 
lege, according to Charles Dickens, the finest specimen of 
classic architecture built in modern times — do they under- 
stand it ? Ev-ery stone is a testimony against our wretched 
divisions. Let them take the will of Stephen Girard, and 
then take the last Will and Testament of Jesus Christ, and 
study them both, the one as a commentary on the other, and 
they will feel like clasping hands and vowing no rest till the 
sin and shame of the Church has ceased from off the earth. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Why did Abraham Lincoln never join the Church ? What- 
ever doubts of the truth of Christianity he may have had in 
his earlier years, in his later life he was a serious and praying 
man. Recall his address to the people of Springfield at the 
railway station, as he was taking his final departure from 
them ; read his last Inaugural — that most remarkable relig- 
ious meditation wrought into an official address, and it will 
be seen that he was unusually thoughtful on sacred subjects. 
He was, moreover, a constant attendant upon divine worship 
— yet he never connected himself with any denomination. 
To explain it, he used, as his custom was, to tell a little story. 
Said he : 

" When I lived in Indiana, there resided near us an old negro, called 
* Uncle Josh.' He was very pious, but so infirm that he could not get out 
to the neighboring school-house where the preachers held forth who at any- 
time happened along there. But his grandchildren were always required 
to go, and also on coming back to give the old man an account of the ser- 
mon. The Methodist and Baptist itinerants who came into that region 



Divisions Httrt oui"" Testimony, ^"^^ 

were very decided in their views, and each one represented his own as the 
only true road to heaven. These different views put Uncle Josh into great 
perplexity, until at last he exclaimed : ' Each one says his de only road — 
and you can't follow 'em all. Well, dis old darkey's ^(^//z^ across lots!' " 

What a host of people find their way out of the perplexity 
as did this sable theologian ! How many, hopelessly in the 
fog as to eternal things, cry out in heart, as did the Hon. 
Obadiah Bowne, an ex-member of Congress, who the day be- 
fore his death, on Staten Island, said to a reporter of the New 
York Sun : 

" In forty-eight hours at furthest I shall be a dead man, and when your 
report appears in The Sun the day after to-morrow, I shall be already cold. 
I feel it coming on. I have had two warnings already, and the third attack 
which is coming will take me. This heart disease is a strange thing, and 
yet it is the best disease that a man can possibly die of. There is no sick- 
ness, no suffering about it. You go off like a shot, and you don't know 
what has happened to you until you are — where } Well, that is something 
that it is not given to man to find out. If the thing were clear there would 
be only one religion, so simple that every one would understand it, but 
there are too many, and the result is that because there are too many, there 
is none. We know nothing ; and as for myself, I can only feel that my 
race is run, that I have no more business with life, and I don't care." 

Looking it all over, seeing how our testimony is neutralized 
before the public by our dissension-3,we cannot but agree with 
the Rev. E. P. Marvin, of Lockport, when he says : '' I do not 
believe that Christianity administered by denominational ma- 
chinery will ever reach the masses." To the same effect speaks 
the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage : 

" I knew this city of Brooklyn eighteen years ago. Since then there have 
been great efforts made for its evangelization, and yet you know as well as 
I that there is more sin in the city tq-day, more Sabbath-breaking, and a 
vaster population who come not under any kind of religious influence. 
Where is Brooklyn to-day ? In the churches ? No ! Where is New York 
to-day } In the churches } No ! no ! no ! It is the exception where peo- 
ple go to church. A vast majority of the masses are traveling on down to- 
ward death, unarrested, because uninvited. Now, if a surgeon goes into a 
hospital and there be three hundred patients, and he cures twenty of them, 
and the other two hundred and eighty die, I call that unsuccessful treat- 
ment. If the Church of God has saved some, when I compare the few that 
have been redeemed with the vast multitudes that have perished, I say it 
has been a comparative failure ; and if the old plan of conducting the 
Church of Christ has failed, let us start the ship on another track and try 
another plan." 



^;^S Divisions Hurt our Testimony. 

Yes, all who are not entombed in bigotry will say : Let us 
try another plan. Let Protestantism be reconstructed. Three 
centuries ago, the Church had a glorious reformation, a refor- 
mation of doctriyie ; but the work is not complete ; before we 
can thoroughly fulfill our mission, and present aright the 
Testimony of Jesus, we must have another reformation — the 
reformation of fellowship. That is the duty of the hour. 
" The union of Christians," says D'Aubigne, " that is the 
Reformation of the Nineteenth Century." 

THE CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION. 

The necessity of reconstruction was impressed upon the 
thoughtful Christians of America at the Centennial Exposi- 
tion held in Philadelphia, in the year 1876. 

This was a Union celebration. The world, all scarred with 
the wounds of war, came to the City of Brotherly Love to 
shake hands. Railroads had just been built, enough to clasp 
the earth five times round — iron belts buckling the nations 
together. Two millions of people were saved from starvation 
in the Bengal famine of 1874 by a friendly railroad connecting 
them with regions of plenty. It was an era of Bridges. In 
every direction separated shores were being united. An old 
Hindoo tradition affirmed that " the sacred Ganges can never 
be bridged ; " but it had been ; and provinces and castes had 
equally been brought together. God was evidently moving 
in this thing. At the opening of the great bridge at St. 
Louis, over the Mississippi, Gov. Beveridge said : 

" The Lord was in the work ! The Lord was the builder ! The Lord 
grants His children to sail over His oceans, to ride upon His seas, to talk 
with His lig-htnings, to tunnel beneath His mountains, to span His valleys, 
and to arch His rivers." 

Beneath all our narrow partisanships and patriotisms, there is 
deep in the breast of man a feeling of universal oneness ; it is 
often seen on the battle-field when the battle is over ; it was 
expressed by Commodore John Paul Jones, when, being a 
Scotchman, he was blamed for fighting in the cause of Ameri- 
can liberty. " I am," said he, " a citizen of the world, totally un- 
fettered by the little mean distinctions of country or of climate, 
which diminish or set bounds to the benevolence of the heart." 
By removing the barriers, and bringing men face to face, God 
had called up this feeling; He had enlarged their minds and 



Divisions Hurt our Testimony. 339 

scattered their prejudices, and showed them that they were all 
of one blood, children of the same Father. 

This was the sentiment underlying the Great Exposition. 
The point was seen by the multitude, when at the opening, 
the President of the United States and the Emperor of Brazil 
— the Republican Magistrate and the Bourbon Prince — put 
hands together on the lever of the Corliss engine to start the 
machinery. The crowds cheered, feeling that national jeal- 
ousies and hates were ground to powder by that machinery. 
''A foreigner, I believe, sir," said one of our countrymen to a 
bluff-looking gentleman, evidently from the old world, as they 
were looking at the pictures in Independence Hall. " Bless 
your heart ; I'm no foreigner," was the reply, '' I'm an En- 
glishman ! " That was the common sentiment. How near it 
came to the principle of Christian love ! 

But to Americans, the Centennial had a still deeper mean- 
ing. We had been fighting each other, and we had made up. 
Richmond and Charleston regiments had gone to the Bunker 
Hill celebration, and the people of Boston had given them an 
enthusiastic reception. Northern and Southern soldiers show- 
ed the scars they had given each other, and then went into 
mutual jollification. A company of young ladies passed down 
the line of Southern soldiers and presented each man with a 
bouquet. " Why, Bob," said one of these soldiers, " my heart 
got as big as my hat when I saw the pretty Northern girls giv- 
ing us such a welcome. I have cursed the name of Yankee, 
but no man shall insult that name any more when Fm about ! " 
That was the feeling which brought people from the North 
and from the South to the Centennial. 

Of all occasions, it was the time for the CHURCH to give her 
testimony ; then she should have stood up, impressive and 
grand, and showed the world that oneness in Christ, better and 
dearer than all human fraternity. And the Evangelical Alli- 
ance did indeed suggest that " there should be appropriate 
religious services during the Exposition, illustrating the unity 
and power of an Evangelical Christianity." Alas, nations 
could harmonize ; soldiers could bury the hatchet, but the 
poor distracted Church could not. Every effort to fix up 
some sort of a union demonstration failed ; we could not 
show Christian union for the simple reason that we did not 
have it to show. 



340 Divisions Hurt our Testimony, 

When Christopher Columbus first landed on the shores of 
this New World, he set up a cross ; when Ferdinand De Soto 
first discovered the Mississippi River, he set up a cross ; when 
the Pilgrims reached the rock at Plymouth, they founded their 
free institutions on the religion of the cross ; and everything 
grand in this Republic — our liberty, our regard for human 
rights, our respect for law, our common schools, and our 
peaceful and wonderful development — have all come from the 
Cross of Jesus Christ ; yet we went away from the celebration 
of our hundredth birth-day without having said officially one 
word about it. A few determined individuals, with great dif- 
ficulty saved the Sabbath from desecration, otherwise we 
did not appear as a Christian nation at all. Christianity 
could not speak because it was divided. A big tree from 
California was cut down, split into sections, hollowed out and 
taken to the Centennial as a curiosity. The Church of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was represented there in the 
same condition. 

THE GROWTH OF INFIDELITY. 

But there is more than general indifference. Failing through 
our divisions to confirm our Testimony, there is an alarming 
growth of positive Infidelity. 

The sects are divided on the questions — whether there are 
three orders in the ministry or only one ; whether there should 
be liturgical or extempore service ; whether we were predestin- 
ed before we were born or when we were converted ; whether we 
should be baptized with a cup of water or in a tank, etc., etc. It 
happens, however, that these are not at all the questions which 
agitate the people at large. Satan is busy in another part of 
the field entirely. The public mind cares not a rush for our 
ministries or liturgies or baptisms, but it is intensely inquiring 
whether there be any divine revelation, any future judgment, 
any God ; it is pondering deeply upon the real issue of the 
day— ''/$• the Bible true ?'' 

On this vital question, the Church, weakened by intestine 
quarrels, cannot speak with decision or force ; and so, while 
we are busy with searchings into the unsearchable and decis- 
ions upon the undecided, the dyke is giving way which keeps 
the flood from us all. A hundred and fifty years ago, the 
people of Amsterdam were aroused from their local disputes 



Divisions Hurt ottr Testimony. 341 

by the discovery that a worm, introduced by a foreign ship, 
was gnawing away the wooden piles upon which their sea-girt 
city was built, and threatened to tumble them all into the 
waters beneath ; no means were known of destroying this 
worm, and it had already multiplied by millions. Little ques- 
tions were dropped then, and the whole population came to- 
gether to consult and pray to God for deliverance. Such a 
worm is at this very time eating away the pillars of the public 
faith. 

Never, since the rise of Christianity, has infidelity been so 
prevalent as now ; there is a most determined effort to de- 
stroy all belief in the Bible as a revelation from God ; it 
is assailed with wit, learning, innuendo, and blasphemy ; 
every effort is made to put it in contradiction to itself and 
the facts of science. A German scholar says : " One period 
fought for Christ's sepulchre, another for His body and blood, 
the present age is contending for His word." 

Speaking of the diffusion of infidelity, the Rev. Dr. Horatius 
Bonar says : 

" Our fathers knew comparatively little of this ; and our fathers' fathers 
almost nothing. An infidel was rare indeed in their day — a man wondered 
at and shunned. Toward the close of the last century infidelity burst forth 
in France, and partially extended itself elsewhere. Of late years it has de- 
veloped itself with prodigious swiftness, and assumed a bold and lofty atti- 
tude of assault. Its extent is incredible. The masses are thoroughly leav- 
ened with it. It has insinuated itself everywhere, and is eating out the very 
heart of everything like deep principle among men. Much of it is undis- 
guised and confessed ; but very much of it is still secret and unavowed. It 
taints the air ; it blights life ; it ossifies conscience ; under it all good things 
wither. It is the worm at the root of all that is noble and excellent in these 
last days. Hence the holloiv condition of things amongst us. Large masses 
of the people are either openly or secretly infidel, if not atheistical. God is 
not acknowledged. His yoke seems to gall men's shoulders. The nations 
are ready to cast it off." 

Unbelief used to hide in corners ; now it organizes and pro- 
claims itself ; it gathers into societies ; it publishes newspapers ; 
it erects chapels ; it scatters tracts ; it speaks from the plat- 
form. Such men as the Rev. Mr. Voysey in London, and the 
Rev. Mr. Frothingham in New York, publicly argue from their 
pulpits to large congregations against the Scriptures and against 
Christianity. A Society organized in our country to combine 
atheists, deists, materialists, and spiritualists in common cause 



342 Divisions Hurt our Testimony. 

against the Bible has collected a large capital stock and is 
flooding the land with infidel documents. Several newspapers, 
organs of these people, have gained a large circulation. 

The public mind has been inoculated with the poison- 
Professor Tyndall, arguing against the Bible history of crea- 
tion, says: ''I discern in matter the promise and potency of 
all terrestrial life ; " and Professor Tyndall is one of the most 
popular teachers of the day. Professor Huxley came to 
Chickering Hall in New York, in September, 1876, and ar- 
gued night after night against the Books of Moses, and was 
heard by approving multitudes of our leading people. De- 
scribing his audiences, a daily paper thus reported : 

" A more brilliant assemblage has rarely complimented by its presence 
any public lecturer. All that New York possesses of cultivated men and 
women in both fashionable and unfashionable circles seemed to have got 
together to do Prof. Huxley homage. Although few clergymen were pres- 
ent, their wives and daughters were out in force, and there was no lack of 
orthodox church members. Physicians and college professors also abound- 
ed, and sprinkled throughout the seats were numbers of men and women of 
the literary profession." 

The prevalence of this scientific infidelity in our institutions 
of learning is terrible. The commencement themes at our 
Male and Female colleges show that it is the works of Mill 
and Comte and Darwin and Herbert Spencer that our young 
people have been reading. As to Darwin, Thomas Carlyle says : 

" I have known three generations of the Darwins, grandfather, father, and 
son ; atheists all." 

And yet, in November, 1877, in opposition to the voice of the 
clergy, the degree of Doctor of Civil Laws was conferred upon 
Mr. Darwin by the University of Cambridge in England. It 
was a victory of the younger scholars. Undergraduates thronged 
the galleries of the great hall, and when Darwin and Huxley 
appeared, the former robed in the scarlet gown of a doctor, 
tremendous and enthusiastic cheers broke forth from all parts 
of the building. 

Quick to catch the popular sentiment. Theaters entertain 
their audiences with burlesque scenes of the Deluge, and por- 
tray the story of the Prodigal Son for a drop curtain. And 
the Secular press : Go up the back stairs of any of our great 
newspaper establishments and you will find a room full of 



Divisions Hurt our Testimony. 343 

bright and busy young men, providing the people with matter 
for thought. Alas, how many of them are rationalists and 
free-thinkers — pewter Voltaires, delighting to sneer at evan- 
gelical faith. 

See what is going on in the Old World. The whole fabric 
of society is honeycombed with infidelity. The Archbishop 
of Canterbury says : 

" New modes of thought are making themselves felt among intelligent 
men ; and no one who looks carefully at the present state of public opinion 
can doubt that a more determined set is now made against the simple belief 
in the power of the Word of God than we remember forty or fifty years ago." 

Attack the pagans ! It is the pagans who attack us. The 
same great divine just quoted, furthermore says : 

" The learning and thought of England is becoming quite too lenient with 
the Hindoo philosophy, and the danger is that Mohammedanism will make 
converts in London itself." 

The venerable Dr. Duff says: 

*' The pantheistic philosophy of India is malignantly affecting the edu- 
cated in Europe and America, and the infidelity of Europe and America is 
malignantly affecting the educated in India." 

The learned Canon Ware says : ^ 

" A very large number indeed of highly-educated Englishmen do not ac- 
cept even the most vital truths of Christianity. A friend of mine said to me 
a short time ago, speaking of himself and those among whom he lived : 
' You know none of us are beHevers in your sense of the word.' " 

The Hon. William E. Gladstone says : 

" The incidents of the time are no common incidents. It is not now only 
the Christian religion, or only the Holy Scriptures, or only Christianity which 

is attacked The disposition is boldly proclaimed to deal alike with 

root and branch, and to snap the ties which, under the venerable name of 
religion, unite man to the unseen world. The learned German, Dr. Strauss, 
has published a volume in which he finds that there is no personal God ; 
there is no future state ; all religious worship therefore ought to be abol- 
ished. The spirit of denial is abroad, and has challenged all religion, and 
especially the religion we profess, to the combat of life and death." 

The Rev. R. W. Dale says : 

" The whole drift of European thought is to exclude the living God from 



344 Divisions Hurt aw Testimony. 

the material universe Hostility to the Christian faith has arisen 

deeper, sterner, and more systematic than that which terrified our fathers 
in the most volcanic hours of the French Revolution." 

Mr. William Howitt says : 

" It would startle some people to discover in how many royal palaces in 
Europe, Spiritualism is firmly seated, and with what vigor it is diffusing 
itself through all ranks and professions of men, who do not care to make 
much noise about it — men and women of literary, religious, and scientific 
fame." 

The London Spectator^ which claims to be Christian, doubts 
" if the cultured minds of England will ever return to faith in 
the validity of the Scripture records ; " and the The Pall Mall 
Gazette asserts that '' to return to a profound faith in Chris- 
tianity, is as hopeless as it would have been for the world of 
the Roman emperors to have returned to a profound faith in 
the old mythologies." An eminent English divine said in a 
sermon recently preached in London, that " if Scripture said 
one thing, and the London Times another, 500 people out of 
every 510 would believe the Timesy And Mr. Moody testi- 
fies that he found more skeptics and infidels during his short 
stay in London than he had met with in any place he had 
visited. The most common excuse to be heard in the inquiry- 
room was, '' I don't believe the Bible." 

Our clergy are generally very faithful and clear in combat- 
ing this great evil ; but the trouble is, their position as secta- 
rians neutralizes what they say. Their testimony is discred- 
ited because they stand before the world as antagonists. Un- 
able to answer the preacher's argument, the world parries it 
with the question — "To which of your churches would you 
convert me?" One thing, maintained by concurrent testi- 
mony, would have weight, but bothered with rival deponents, 
folks shy the question altogether. A Presbyterian deacon, 
who had a Baptist wife, used to discuss immersion with her, 
until they once heard their little girl quietly remark: *' Well, 
I believe there are two Lords and two faiths and two bap- 
tisms ! " upon which they concluded it was about time to 
stop. So when the world sees us separated and clashing, 
without sifting what we say, it concludes first that one belief 
is as good as another, then that it does not matter what one 
believes, and finally that it is just as well to believe nothing 



Divisions Hurt our Testimoiiy. 345 

at all. In a word, because we contradict each other, the Bible 
is rated as a contradictory book. 

'' Nothing," says Edmund Burke, '' has driven people more 
into infidelity and indifference, than the mutual hatred of 
Christian congregations." '' I date," says Lord Byron, '' my 
first impressions against religion from having witnessed how 
little its votaries were actuated by true Christian charity." 
'' Quarrels among believers," says the Rev. Charles R. Bliss, 
" have been the fountains of atheism. Science has not made 
one atheist where excommunications and frigid prejudice 
(falsely called religious principle) and non-intercourse among 
avowed Christians have made hundreds." 

Thus, while we bring ten to God by our good sermons, we 
harden a hundred against Him by our divisions. So plain is 
the failure of the sectarian minisjtry to uphold the Bible, that 
it is proposed to have a special department outside of them 
for that purpose. At the Pan-Presbyterian Council held at 
Edinburgh, in 1877, the Rev. Dr. McCosh, of Princeton, read 
a paper in which he said that — 

" Materialistic psychology was powerful in Germany and England and in 
the Scotch universities, and was spreading in America, and the Church was 
bound in duty to train a body of apologists, who were to relieve ministers 
from the work of battling with the infidel. That is not ministerial work, 
and many who engage in it had better be tilling the ground as preachers 
of the Gospel or Sunday-school teachers. There should be a trained body 
of the defenders of the faith to meet attacks at every point at which it might 
be assailed." 

Nothing was ever said on the subject more significant than 
that — " Ministers to be relieved from battling with the infi- 
del ! " as if that were not the very thing they were set apart 
and educated and ordained for. It was an acknowledgment 
by a leading divine, in the very center of Protestantism, that 
our sectarian system is a failure. For, the fault is not with 
the ministry; another body of " apologists " would succeed no 
better. So long as we are divided, the world would answer 
them just as it answers us. 

No. We must come out from these sects — that is the solu- 
tion of the difficulty. We cannot arrest the progress of infi- 
delity while we are contending with each other about forms 
and opinions, and compassing sea and land to make one prose- 
lyte. To substantiate our Testimony and defend the Faith 
once delivered to the saints, we must speak with united voice, 
as the One Church of Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER XV. 

DIVISIONS HURT OUR POWER. 

" Triumphant Zion, lift thy head 
From dust and darkness and the dead ; 
Though humbled long, awake at length, 
And gird thee with thy Saviour's strength." 

POWER OF UNION. 

No argument is required to prove the power of union. We 
need not go to the Bible to learn that. Centuries before Christ 
said that a house divided against itself could not stand, and 
that a kingdom divided against itself would be brought to 
desolation, vEsop told of the old man who showed his quar- 
relsome children how easy it was to break a stick, and how 
hard it was to break a bundle of them. 

The fact is well understood in Business affairs. When old 
Meyer Rothschild died in 1812, he called his five sons, Anselm, 
Solomon, Nathan, Charles, and James, to his bedside, and 
made them swear to be true to the Law of Moses and never 
to separate from each other. The brothers kept their vow. 
Establishing their business, one in Frankfort, another in Lon- 
don, and the rest in Paris, Naples, and Vienna, they always, 
through every dynasty and revolution, operated as one house. 
The brothers are dead, but their children remain united. 
Whatever the discords in the palaces or the streets, the 
Rothschilds keep together. The result is, for fifty years these 
Jewish bankers have controlled the monied harvests and cre- 
ated financial rain or sunshine — the most powerful family on 
the face of the earth. 

In Government affairs the fact is equally well known. See- 
ing that each of our single States is weak, but that all together 
are strong, we form them into an arch, and call it " The United 
States," and over it put the motto — '' E pluribus unum," to 
show wherein lies the secret of our strength. To this is due 
(346) 



Divisions Hurt our Power. 347 

the mighty influence of our republic upon the peoples of the 
Old World ; they reach toward us as the tidal waves surge up 
under the moon ; were we separate, forty distinct nations, we 
would have no more effect upon them than the asteroids upon 
the ocean. Germany could tell us a thing or two about this 
matter. For ages cut up into little dukedoms and principal- 
ities, Germany was not an element in European politics ; it 
was mere foraging ground for its neighbors. But under wise 
leadership the little provinces a few years ago coalesced, and 
the moment it became an Empire, Germany stepped into the 
front rank among the powers of the world. It is suggestive to 
recall the Fatherland in its division, with Napoleon the First 
driving the plowshare of desolation through the German 
fields and the German heart, tearing Prussia into fragments, 
sending its king into exile and its queen into the grave — and 
then to think of it in its unity, marching on Paris without 
making a halt, and dictating to Napoleon the Third the place 
of his banishment. Divided, Germany is the foot-ball of the 
nations ; united, she presides at their council-board. 

The very beasts understand it. The ants have been known 
in an inundation to collect in a compact mass, with firm hold 
on some friendly tree and each other, and thus escape being 
carried away ; and Humboldt, in his description of Guiana, 
tells of a pyramid of snakes which he saw darting their tongues 
and rolling their fiery Q.yQ.i at him, having joined in this for- 
midable phalanx for protection against their enemy, the great 
serpent, or cayman. 

In Military affairs union is about everything. The aim of 
every great commander is, if possible, to divide his enemies 
and to fling his own forces upon them as one man. In the 
old war between the Romans and the Albans, the issue was 
left to the trial of combat between the three Roman sons of 
Horatius and the three Alban sons of Curatius. The three 
Curatii stood close together, and though all wounded, suc- 
ceeded in killing two of the Horatii. In this desperate strait, 
the remaining Roman began to fly. The Albans broke apart 
and followed him one after another. Seeing them separated, 
the cunning Roman turned, met them singly, and slew the 
whole three. Most of the defeats we read of were due to 
jealousies and want of co-operation among the vanquished. 
Just before the battle of Trafalgar, Lord Nelson learned that 



34^ Divisions Hurt our Power. 

two of his captains, Collingwood and Rotherham, were not on 
good terms with each other. The idea of going into action 
that way was not to be thought of. " Terms ! " shouted the 
admiral ; " not on good terms with each other — bring them to 
me." Then, putting their hands together, he pointed over the 
waters, and said : " Look, yonder is the foe ! " So they laid 
aside their dispute, fought in harmony, and gained a memo- 
rable victory. 

WEAKNESS OF SECT. 

The Christian element in our land is beyond all question 
its strongest element, and the heart throbs with thought of 
what It could do if united. Says Dr. Guthrie : 

" It is impossible to estimate the power that lies latent in our churches. 
We talk of the power that was latent in steam — latent till Watt evoked its 
spirit from the waters, and set the giant to turn the iron arms of machin- 
ery. We talk of the power that was latent in the skies till science climbed 
their heights, and seizing the spirit of the thunder, chained it to our sur- 
face, abolishing distance, outstripping the wings of time, and flashing our 
thoughts across rolling seas to distant continents. Yet what are these to 
the moral power that lies asleep in the congregations of our country and 
of the Christian world ! " 

Were this latent power put into united action— one in love 
and mighty resolve — Zion would rise, like Samson from his 
prison-house, and colossal wrongs that bar its way and oppress 
the earth, would fall before its regained strength. 

But with all their learned doctors and universities, Chris- 
tians seem ignorant of this primary lesson of union. They go 
forth against the combined forces of Satan, cut up into rival 
sects, guerrilla companies, each one having a separate interest 
and plan, and independent of the rest ; and with foes around 
them on every side, they use a vast deal of their strength in 
putting down each other. During the Peninsular war, an 
officer of artillery had just fired a cannon against a body of 
men posted in a wood to the left, when Wellington rode up ; 
turning his glass in the direction of the shot, the Duke said, 
in his cool way : " Well aimed, Captain, but no more ; they 
are our own 39th ! " That sort of thing, not by mistake, but 
intentionally, is going on among all the sections of the Chris- 
tian army ; we are everywhere firing into each other. Presi- 
dent Hopkins says : " Nine-tenths of the energies of the 



Divisions Hurt our Power. 349 

Church are wasted by our internal contentions." The result 
is what might be expected. Separate the cable into threads 
and a child can break it ; separate a hammer into atoms and 
it will fall easy as a snow-flake ; fire off your powder in sepa- 
rate grains and no rock is rent. 

Aggressive power under these circumstances is out of the 
question ; we keep each other from making an onward move. 
Two steamboats were once fastened, stern to stern, for a trial 
of their engines ; being well-matched, they neither advanced 
an inch. We put our rival sects into a village, and whip them 
up ; they pull with forty-yoke power ; they fill the whole 
neighborhood with their din, and go forward not a peg ; they 
merely neutralize each other. A congregation on our fron- 
tier, some years ago divided, each party calling a minister and 
claiming the building. The two ministers one Sunday morn- 
ing went into the edifice to conduct service, one standing in 
the pulpit, the other down in front of it. They gave out dif- 
ferent hymns, which were sung by their partisans at the same 
time ; then one tried to preach while the other was reading 
the Scripture. There was ridiculous confusion, and the only 
result was a quietus upon all religion whatever in that sec- 
tion. That was an unusual case ; we very seldom wrangle in 
the same building; but in every village in the land we are 
singing and preaching against each other, and the general 
effect is just the same. 

Instead of aggression, it is more than the sects can do to 
keep the enemy out of their own strongholds. Our river craft, 
loaded with lumber, sometimes get water-logged ; they spring 
aleak, and the water soaks into the lumber and makes it so 
heavy that the vessels will not sail, and have to be towed into 
port. Mr. Moody says : ^' It takes now about all the strength 
of the Church to take care of the Church ; and the ministers, 
elders, and deacons spend nearly all their time with water- 
logged Christians, instead of working in the world." This is 
a ruinous state of things to the Church ; for its safety lies in 
constantly working upon the enemy ; when mill-stones stop 
grinding the grain they begin to grind each other ; when 
Christians cease from aggression they are defeated. '' It is a 
maxim of military art," said the great Napoleon, '' that the 
army which remains in its intrenchments is beaten." And 
so we find the sects, invaded from every side and struggling 



S5^ Divisions Hurt our Power. 

with hostile intruders within their own ranks, — the Episco- 
pahans in mortal strife with Puseyism, the Lutherans over- 
run with Symbolism, the Friends distracted with Hicksite 
heresy, the Congregationalists in fierce contest with Unitarian- 
ism, and all busy with the inroads of covetousness and worldly 
conformity. In a word, the noble Church of God, with her 
grand history and still grander possibilities, lies prostrate, like 
a wounded lion trying to keep the jackals away. 

The sectarian leaders have no excuse for thus crippling the 
Church, for they acknowledge and practice the principles of 
union within their own bounds. Opposed as they are to the 
oneness of the Body of Christ, they are uncommonly careful 
of the oneness of their own fragment of it; they will bend, 
and compromise, and tolerate eccentricities, and twist their 
standards into all manner of shapes, to save themselves from 
schism. A leading Presbyterian paper in New York, not long 
ago had an article against the efforts being made to unite the 
Church, saying : " This penchant for co-operation, rather than 
building over against one's own house, looks well from with- 
out, but is a source of weakness to those who practice it." 
And yet in that same article the editor explained the reason 
of the union of the Old and New School parties, by saying : 
** It was done to further their respective plans of church 
aggression." That is, union is a source of weakness to Chris- 
tians at large, but helps mightily the aggressive power of the 
Presbyterians! Since their junction in 1859, the Presbyterians 
have had a marked increase in efficiency and numbers, yet 
many who favored that union are firmly set against a union 
which would strengthen the whole Church of God. Oh, the 
exceeding narrowness of partisan zeal ! It must have been 
while thinking of these things that Dv/ight L. Moody ex- 
claimed : ^' If I thought I had a drop of sectarian blood in 
me, I would let it out before I got my breakfast ! " 

FEEBLE WITH GOD. 

The greatest result of preaching probably ever known in 
America was that which followed the sermon of Jonathan 
Edwards on the subject of " Sinners in the hands of an angry 
God." There was a history to it. The Christians of the neigh- 
borhood, alarmed lest while God was blessing other places He 
would in anger pass them by, came together the evening pre- 



Divisions Hurt our Power, 351 

vious and spent the whole night in direct appeals to God for a 
manifestation of His Spirit. When Mr. Edwards preached the 
next day, he was quiet and unimpassioned as usual, but the 
hearers were swayed by an invisible hand ; they rose to their 
feet in awe ; many of the impenitent grasped hold of the pil- 
lars of the edifice, feeling that their feet were actually sliding 
into the pit. The prayer was answered, and a mi'ghty revival 
spread throughout New England. 

It is a matter for serious consideration why Christians now 
have so little of this power with God. We expect little in the 
closet, but still less in the sanctuary. We meet in our various 
sectarian houses of worship professedly to petition the Throne 
of grace, but we offer our prayers as sailors consign a message 
to the sea — expecting no return. If our petitions were an- 
swered we would be astonished. The little girl, who, on hear- 
ing that the Church was going to pray for rain, took an um- 
brella with her, was laughed at. Yet if anything is clear in 
Scripture, it is that the Church can and ought to have this di- 
rect influence with the Almighty. There was much ridicule 
in certain quarters not long ago because the Governor of Mis- 
souri called for a day of fasting and prayer, through fear of an 
invasion of grasshoppers. The idea of praying against grass- 
hoppers ! Yet nothing is truer than that God did say : 

" If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts 
to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people ; if my people 
w^hich are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek 
my face, and turn from their wicked ways ; then will I hear from heaven, 
and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." — 2 Chron. vii. 13, 14. 

The measure of the power of prayer appears to be in pro- 
portion to the numbers who unite in it. Says Mr. Spurgeon : 

" Faith is a cumulative force. ' According to thy faith so be it done 
unto thee ' is true to one, to two, to twenty, to twenty thousand ; and twen- 
ty thousand times the force will be the result of twenty thousand times of 
faith. Rest assured that while two or three have power with God in their 
measure, two or three hundred have still more. If great results are to 
come, they will be accompanied by the prayers of many ; nay, the brightest 
days of all will never come except by the unanimous prayer of the whole 
Church." 

The full efiBcacy of prayer therefore seems to belong only to 
the united Church. In corroboration of this we find that the 



35^ Divisions Hurt otir Power. 

only two periods when the Church thoroughly enjoyed this 
power with God were the two periods when there were no di- 
visions in her ranks. The generation of Israel which entered 
the promised land with Joshua, the generation consolidated 
by the perils of the wilderness, the generation so jealous of 
their unity that they raised a monument on the banks of the 
Jordan to show that those on both sides were but one people, 
was, above all others of Old Testament history, the generation 
which most potently moved the Divine arm. Then it was 
that the sun and moon stood still at the command of Joshua, 
and the walls of Jericho fell down of themselves, and hailstones 
from heaven slew the enemy at Gibeon. 

The early Church was united, and it also had this power. 
Then it was that the Holy Ghost was prayed down from 
heaven and that Peter was prayed out of prison. As we look 
forward to Millennial times, when the Church shall again be- 
come one, v/e find this power specially promised to her, '* Before 
they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will 
hear." Yes, there was meaning in that scene at Rephidim : 
Israel prevailing so long as Aaron and Hur, standing with 
Moses, held up his hands, and Amalek prevailing when those 
hands were unloosed. 

There was in the early days of Christianity a prerogative of the 
Church called the " Power of the Keys," or the power of open- 
ing and closing the gates of heaven. It has been so long un- 
used that we never think of it now ; and we were quite taken 
by surprise to learn that after a late ^ineute against the author- 
ities, instigated by the priests down in Salvador, passports were 
found in the pockets of the dead rebels, reading thus : 

" Peter ! Open the gates of heaven to the bearer, who has died for 
religion. 

"(Signed), George, 

''Bishop of San Salvador.'' 

This was mere papal impudence ; but it was startling, too, 
for it reminded us that this very power was given to the 
Church by the Lord Jesus Christ. " I will give unto thee," 
said He, '' the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatso- 
ever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and 
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in 
heaven." What has become of that power? We very mod- 



Divisions Hurt our Power. 353 

estly never presume to claim it. We paint pictures of the 
keys sometimes on our stained-glass windows, but the imple- 
ments themselves have lain rusty for some fifteen hundred 
years. The great and mysterious influence with God and the 
eternal world, thus guaranteed and for a long time given 
to the Church, went out as divisions came in. 

Like a wandering heir, the Church has no conception of her 
capabilities or endowments ; and the world smiles at the hint 
of such a thing. Not long since, Prof. Tyndall, at a meeting 
in London, before a company of bishops and clergy, gravely 
said : 

" I am speaking to men of education and men of learning- ; to men who 
have read history and observed the course of nature ; and I feel constrained 
to ask you, as gentlemen of culture, whether it is really possible that you can 
have any belief in the efficacy of prayer to affect this universe in the slight- 
est degree?" 

It is not clear, just as things are now, what could be said in 
reply to that, for very little influence over the universe do we 
manifest at present ; but let us come together, let the Church 
stand forth again as the one One Body of Christ, and it could 
hold a pray^er-meeting that would answer Prof. Tyndall in 
ten minutes. 

FEEBLE AGAINST POPERY. 

That Protestant must be easily content who is satisfied with 
our stand against the great Apostasy. 

The Bible is all on our side ; so plainly that the priests dare 
not let their people read it. The Argument, also, is undenia- 
bly in our favor. The papacy rests on the claim that it in- 
herits the authority established by St. Peter as bishop of 
Rome. For three centuries this claim has been thoroughly 
searched and sifted, and has been found to be mere assumption. 
There is no proof that apostolic authority can be inherited, or 
that such inheritance belongs to the bishops of Rome, or that 
Peter was ever bishop of Rome, or that he was ever 'in Rome 
at all. Before the tribunal of Scripture and Logic, therefore, 
the case was decided against it long ago, and by this time the 
Hierarchy of Rome ought to be a thing of the past, like the 
great Empire whose ruins it inhabits. 

Yet, never was the papacy stronger than it is to-day. Its 
23 



354 Divisions Hurt our Power, 

loss of temporal possessions has not hurt it ; the revolutions 
which take away its political power leave its spiritual power 
unharmed. The Pope is no longer sovereign over the States 
of the Church, but Italy is as strongly Roman Catholic as ever 
it was. France, Spain, and Mexico have all driven the priest- 
hood out of political office, but they have not become Protest- 
ant ; the papal religion is as secure in the hearts of their peo- 
ples as it was before. 

And .while standing firm in its ancient territories, it is mak- 
ing steady advance in Protestant lands. In England the 
hierarchy has v^ithin late years been fully re-established, is 
rapidly increasing in numbers and wealth, and counts among 
its devotees a large proportion of the aristocracy. As to 
Gennany, Bismarck, in a speech delivered April i6, 1875, 
said : " This Pope, this foreigner, this Italian, is more power- 
ful in this country than any other person, not excepting the 
monarch." 

As to the United States, Dr. Mattison furnishes from the 
Catholic World a table showing the growth of Popery among 
us, as follows : 

Catholics. Whole Population. Proportion. 



In 1808 ico,ooo , 

" 1830 450,000 . 

" 1840 960,000 . 

" 1850 2,150,000 . 

" i860 4,400,000 . 

" 1870 7,000,000 . 



6,000,000 .... i-6oth. 

13,000,000 .... i-29th. 

17,000,000 .... i-i8th. 

23,000,000 .... i-iith. 

31,000,000 .... i-7th. 

39,000,000 .... i-5th. 



In 1 8 16 there were in New England 2,000 Roman Catholics ; 
now there are a million. In 1800 there were in the United 
States I bishop, 100 priests, and about 50,000 laymen ; now 
there are i Cardinal, 7 Archbishops, 57 Bishops, 4,500 priests, 
and a lay membership of some 8,000,000. " The man is to-day 
living," says the Romish organ, the Boston Pilot, " who will see 
the majority of the people of the American Continent Roman 
Catholic." As to wealth, it has, compared to the number of 
its congregations, become within twenty years the richest de- 
nomination among us. Its property within that period has 
increased six-fold. Its value was returned in 1850 at $9,256,758. 
In 1870 it was returned at $60,985,566. A great deal is said 
about the wonderful increase of Methodist meeting-houses — 



Divisions Hurt our Power. 355 

the Roman Catholics have expended since i860 four times as 
much money in building sanctuaries as the Methodists. 
Says Eugene Lawrence : 

" In her faded magnificence Rome still possesses the most imposing of 
earthly empires. She rules over nearly two hundred millions of the human race. 
Her well-ordered army of priests, both regular and secular, arrayed almost 
with the precision of a Roman legion, and governed by a single will, carry 
the standard of St. Peter to the farthest bounds of civilization, and cover the 
whole earth with a chain of influences radiating from the central city. The 
Pope is still powerful in Europe and America, Africa and the East. He 
disturbs the policy of England, and sometimes governs that of France ; his 
influence is felt in the revolutions of Mexico and the elections of New York. 

" As if to maintain before the eyes of mankind a semblance of super- 
natural splendor, the Popes have invented and perfected at Rome a ritual 
more magnificent than was ever known before. In the Basilica of St. Peter, 
the largest and most costly building ever erected by man, the annual pomp 
of the Romanish ceremonies exceeds the powers of description. The gor- 
geous robes, the plaintive music, the assembled throng of princes, cardinals, 
and priests, the various rites designed to paint in living colors the touching 
memorials of the Saviour's life and death, delight or impress the inquisitive 
and the devout. And when at length the Holy Father, parent of all the 
faithful, appears upon the balcony of St. Peter's and bestows his blessing 
upon mankind, few turn away unaffected by the splendid spectacle, un- 
touched by the peculiar fascinations of the magnificent Church of Rome." 

Rome has little stock in the Bible and cannot meet us in 
argument ; but one thing she can do, she can see the weak point 
among her adversaries, and can adroitly take advantage of it. 
Her great forte is adapting herself to the situation. As an 
eloquent writer has said : 

" Popery has been called the ' masterpiece of Satan ; * and no one can have 
studied its character or marked its striking success without seeing how emi- 
nently fitted it is to adapt itself to all the various moods and phases of de- 
praved human nature. It appeals to all the senses — calls in the aid of all 
the arts — suits itself to all the tastes of men ; it provides indulgences for the 
sensual — brilliant pageants for the gay — gloomy retirements for the morose 
— princely honors for the ambitious — promises of heaven for the generous 
devotee. It is literally ' all things to all men.' It meets man at all the most 
tender and interesting periods of his history — at his cradle — at his marriage 
— in sickness — at death — at the grave, when weeping over the remains of 
friends ; and for all these circumstances it has plausible and appropriate 
promises. It lays hold of the teacher, the politician, the author, the states- 
man, the demagogue, the king, and strives to turn them all into its obse- 
quious instruments. It seizes the press. It loves, especially, to dwell at the 
centers and sources of earthly power. If that power be a despotism. Popery 
has its most accomplished agents at the despot's ear. If it be a democracy. 



35^ Divisions Hurt our Power. 

Popery, whilst laboring to overthrow all forms of human freedom, has its 
busy agents everywhere wielding the masses toward the accomplishment of 
its ends. It has already achieved mighty triumphs ; and the Word of God 
and the signs of the times seem to point to victories yet to be won, before it 
is destroyed ' by the spirit of Christ's mouth, and the brightness of His com- 
ing.' The man who despises it is equally ignorant of Scripture, of history, 
and of the human heart. To it the striking language of our Saviour may be 
justly applied : ' If it were possible it would deceive even the very elect.' " 

Under this consummate generalship, Popery fastens itself 
upon our one great evil ; there she attacks us, and there she 
conquers. She is united, and we are divided ; that undeniable 
fact paralyzes us and protects her. 

At the start, Protestantism was everywhere victorious. On 
the issue of an open Bible and Justification by faith, the 
Reformation swept over Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and 
England. France was almost converted. But quarrels broke 
out among the reformers. Luther, not understanding the 
principles of Gospel liberty, turned upon his own friends who 
differed from him on minor points, assailing Zwingle, and call- 
ing the learned reformer, ^colampadius, " a black devil." To 
thoroughly understand the matter, we should read the follow- 
ing letter which John Calvin, under date of Nov. 25, 1544, sent 
to the noble Protestant, Bullinger, who had received some of 
Luther's shafts : 

" I hear that Luther has at length broken forth in fierce invective, not so 
much against you as against the whole of us. I do earnestly desire to put 
you in mind, in the first place, that you would consider how eminent a man 
Luther is, and the excellent endowments wherewith he is gifted, with what 
strength of mind and resolute constancy, with how great skill, with what 
efficiency and power of doctrinal statement he hath hitherto devoted his 
whole energy to overthrowing the reign of Antichrist, and at the same time 
to diffuse far and near the doctrine of salvation. Often have I been wont to 
declare, that even although he were to call me a devil, I should still not the 
less hold him in such honor that I must acknowledge him to be an illus- 
trious servant of God. 

" But while he is endued with rare and excellent virtues, he labors at the 
same time under serious faults. Would that he had rather studied to curb 
this restless, uneasy temperament which is so apt to boil over in every di- 
rection. I wish, moreover, that he had always bestowed the fruits of that 
vehemence of natural temperament upon the enemies of the truth, and that 
he had not flashed his lightning sometimes also upon the servants of the 
Lord. Would that he had been more observant and careful in the acknowl- 
edgment of his own vices. Flatterers have done him much mischief, since 
he is naturally too prone to be over-indulgent to himself. 



Divisions Hurt our Power. 357 

" It is our part, however, so to reprove whatsoever evil qualities may beset 
him, as tliat we may make some allowance for him at the same time on the 
score of these remarkable endowments with which he has been gifted. This, 
therefore, I would beseech you to consider first of all, along with your col- 
leagues, that you have to do with a most distinguished servant of Christ, 
to whom we are all largely indebted ; that besides, you will do yourselves no 
good by quarreling, except that you may afford some sport to the wicked, so 
that they may triumph not so much over us as over the Evangel. If they see 
us rending each other asunder, they avail themselves unwarrantably ©f our 
inherent weakness to cast reproach upon our faith. But when with one 
consent and with one voice we preach Christ, they then give full credit to 
what we say. 

" I wish, therefore, that you would consider and reflect upon these things 
rather than on what Luther has deserved by his violence : lest that may- 
happen to you which Paul threatens, that by biting and devouring one an- 
other, ye be consumed one of another. Even should he have provoked us, 
we ought rather to decHne the contest than to increase the wound by the 
general shipwreck of the Church." 

What Calvin feared, has come to pass. The papacy rallied. 
It caught up Luther's fiery expressions and repeated them 
everywhere. From that moment the dash of the Reformation 
was over ; it fell exhausted with the wounds it received in the 
house of its friends. It has never recovered. For three hun- 
dred years it has stood helpless before the thrust of its foe — 
" See, with two hundred millions of people, we are united all 
over the world ; and Protestantism is cut up into hundreds of 
clashing sects ; which is the true Church ? " Said Richard 
Baxter : 

" Thousands have been drawn to Popery, and confirmed in it, by the di- 
visions of Protestants. All the arguments in Bellarmine, and all their other 
treatises, have not been so effectual to make papists, as the multitude of 
sects among ourselves. We take the position, and believe it tenable, that 
the Gospel cannot accomplish its great triumph, and collect the redeemed 
from every land, until the law of Christ be fulfilled by these Protestant sects, 
until they become one." 

We make feeble reply with our '' essential unity of faith and 
spirit ; " but Papists deny that there is any such unity, and 
challenge us to show^ proof of it. The leading organ of the 
Roman Catholics in our country, the New York Tablet^ said 
not long ago : 

" Protestant Christendom has been preserved by the doctrine of an invisi- 
ble Church, with 'essential unity in faith and spirit,' as certain tablets 



35^ Divisions Hurt ottr Power. 

have been preserved in an invisible condition by lava at Pompeii; but the 
moment the ' essential unity in faith and spirit ' is made an actual and visible 
oneness, it will, like the Pompeian tablets on exposure to light, crumble into 
ashes." 

VVe cannot reply to that in our present condition. So long 
as we cannot work together in any foreign field, or in any vil- 
lage at home, all talk of '^ invisible fellowship " amounts to 
nothing. The world considers a fellowship non-visible, a non- 
entity. Shakespeare says : " He does not love that does not 
show his love ; " and until we exhibit this fellowship in action 
we cannot convince men that we are the Church of the one 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

" Give my cordial greeting to the Evangelical Alliance," 
said the Emperor William, of Germany, to Dr. Schaff. '^ Such 
efforts are of the utmost importance at this time of conflict 
with the powers of infidelity on the one hand, and superstition 
on the other ; for only a united army can expect to conquer 
the enemy and enjoy the benefits of victory." How far must 
we go before we heed these sensible words ! 

FEEBLE AGAINST PREVAILING WRONG. 

The Church is sent not merely to preach against sin, but to 
put forth power against it ; to use not only her tongue, but 
her arm. Our Master is a Prophet, a Priest, and also a King ; 
this earth is His, and He is the rightful sovereign over it, and 
we are commissioned not only to speak, but to act for the es- 
tablishment of His throne. The Church is therefore spoken 
of as "' fair as the moon, clear as the sun," and likewise '^ terri- 
ble as an army with banners." As revolutionists against the 
sway of Satan over this planet we are to march under the 
word of the Almighty : '^ I will overturn, overturn, overturn 
it, and it shall be no more until He come whose right it is." 
We are not to rest until " The kingdoms of this world are be- 
come the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ." 

Upon this holy onset our divisions tell with fatal effect. 
How rnuch preaching we have, and how little power! With 
errors of judgment Jesus was very tender ; kindly and patiently 
did He explain the truth to His disciples and to the woman at 
the well, but there were prevailing and insolent wrongs, fortified 
by popular habits and institutions which He did not merely 



Divisions Hurt our Power. 



359 



upbraid. He did not merely preach against buying and sell- 
ing in the temple, He went in and overturned the seats of 
the money-changers. 

So, there are great wrongs around us ; wrongs corrupting so- 
ciety and demoralizing our youth ; wrongs which put on fine 
raiment and move in good society and shelter themselves be- 
hind legal sanctions and corporation privileges ; wrongs which 
defy us and invade our lines and bring worldliness and venality 
into the sanctuary and dictate a sensuous and unholy worship. 
Against these wrongs the world graciously permits us to 
preach, with the understanding that having freely said our 
say, the pews are to do as they please ; there is no offense, 
for it is expected that with our preaching all opposition will 
cease ; we may denounce, but not touch them. 

But that does not fulfill our duty. We are not stationed 
here merely to protest ; our orders are not merely to stand on 
one mountain, as the Israelites did, while the Philistines stood 
on another — facing each other; no, we are to go down into 
the valley, as David did, and grapple the giant. There are 
errors and misconceptions which are to be reasoned with in 
all gentleness, but these assuming and arrogant evils we are to 
"fight and stamp out. It is not enough to set our faces against 
them. For thirty centuries the Egyptian Sphinx has frowned 
at the sands encroaching upon the plains of the Nile, but it 
has never beaten back a single grain. That is not the mission 
of the Church. She is to move against the enemy ; however 
huge or powerful it may have grown, she is to strike it in the 
name of the Lord. 

But against such wrong, our holy force is latent now, be- 
cause we are separate and pitted against each other. With 
all our preaching, see the condition of things around us. 
From the Christian we take the following account of the 
state of Christendom : 

" Men have gone back in considerable numbers, and are going back more 
and more every day, to pagan thoughts, doubts, habits, and morals. 

" The vilest sculptures that adorned the dwellings of Pompeii, before it, 
like its prototype Sodom, went down beneath the storm of wrath and fire, 
were not more loathsome than tons of books and pictures which in this 
boasted Christian land have been printed and circulated among males and 
females, young and old, in all the nooks and corners of the land. 

" The unnatural cruelty which murders infants in China, or drowns them 
in the rolling waters of the sacred River Ganges, is paralleled, not only in 



o 



60 Divi:,ions Hurt our ^ower. 



such cities as Paris, from whose sewers the bodies of ten thousand new- 
born infants have been taken in one year, but also in many a quiet, orderly, 
childless home, where the blood of murdered innocence, and the curse of 
Almighty God rests upon those who, defying the laws of their own being 
and the first command of the Creator (Gen. i. 28), root out of their hearts 
all parental instincts, and prove themselves void of the natural sympathies 
that mark the human-kind. 

" The reckless riot that marked the ancient worship of the god of wine, 
beastly as it seemed, is more than equaled by the far wider ruin wrought by 
intoxicating and deadly beverages, which, concocted at the centers of civili- 
zation, and beneath the very shadows of church steeples, roll out in ac- 
cursed streams to earth's remotest bounds, poisoning, stupefying, and de- 
stroying thousands on thousands by their dark and deadly power. 

" The necromancy, idolatry, sorcery, magic, sooth-saying, and devil-wor- 
ship of heathendom can be matched to-day, by the deep and devilish devices 
of spirit mediums, who, by their cunning craft and pestilential teachings, 
as well as by the bold and arrogant frauds they perpetrate upon the ungodly 
dupes who follow in their train, are clearly shown to be the worthy descend- 
ants of Jannes and Jambres and Elymas of old. 

"And, if v>e come to lies, and tricks, and frauds, and deceptions, and 
shams, and cheats, and swindles, heathenism is nowhere, compared with 
the subhme rascality which results from modern ingenuity, science, art, and 
machinery. Corruption rolls in floods. Church, State, and society are 
reeking with defilement and contamination ; and, under a thin varnish of 
politeness, morality, and civiHzation, there dwell abominations deep and ^ 
black and foul and terrible." 

To see that this is not overdrawn, consider two facts. The 
official records show that while the annual income of all the 
churches of Great Britain is 21,000,000 pounds sterling, the 
income of the liquor-dealers is six and a half times greater. 
And our own Custom-house returns show that ten times as 
much opium is now imported into this country as was im- 
ported thirty years ago; the consumption is about 2,000 cases, 
or 300,000 pounds, per year. Physicians testify that not one- 
fifth of this amount is legitimately needed for medicine, and 
that opium-eating Is worse than liquor-drinking. A druggist 
on Division Street in New York, from whose rear door every 
few moments emerge poor, half-stupid men and women, with 
tin-cups containing the black paste which is to give them 
some hours of forgetfulness, said : " They use themselves up in 
about five years, and usually in three years they become idi- 
otic, and fit for nothing but the hospital." 

In the midst of abominations like these, our congregations 
go through their quiet services peaceful as the tombstones 



Divisions Hurt our Power. 361 

which often surround them. An old man, whose tenement- 
room looked out upon one of our city grave-yards, was asked 
if it was not an unpleasant location. '' Not at all," said he. 
" I never in all my life had a set of neighbors who minded 
their own business so stiddy as they do!" Just the compli- 
ment we get from the saloons and the shades. We seldom 
disturb them. Occasionally we have meetings for reform, 
but they represent nobody except those present. The news- 
papers, weighted with horse-races, yacht-races, and politi- 
cal broils, hardly consider them important enough to notice. 
Once in a while some individual or little band will make an 
attack on the haunts of vice ; the utmost result of which is 
forcing them to pay a license and to close their front doors 
on Sunday. It is mere pecking at the monster evils of society. 
We cannot pass a law to stop the selling of whisky, and we 
could not enforce it if we did. We are too weak even to stop 
the poisonous adulteration of milk. 

Yet, were the CHURCH OF NEW YORK established, she 
could, on all great moral questions, such as the liquor traffic, 
suppression of the social evil, observance of the Sabbath, the 
Bible in our public schools, etc., control the city. No sane 
man can doubt it. Were the 75,000 Christians of this city 
united, they would, with their combined learning, wealth, and 
influence, be beyond all comparison the strongest power in 
the comjnunity. Were even the 45,000 Protestant women of 
New York united, they could drive any of these brazen-faced 
wrongs into the corner. 

FEEBLE IN THE NATION. 

In the year 1782, when John Quincy Adams was connected 
with our legation at St. Petersburg, his father wrote him a 
letter concluding with these words : 

" Your conscience is the minister plenipotentiary of God Almighty in 
your breast. See to it that this minister never negotiates in vain. Attend 
to Him, in opposition to all the courts in the world. So charges your affec- 
tionate father, 

"John Adams. ' 

Conscience is God's ambassador to the nation as well as to 
the individual, and the nation is as liable to punishment for 
disregarding it as the individual; more immediately so indeed, 
for individuals having their existence running into the next 



362 Divisions Hurt our Power. 

world are often spared till then, but nations existing only in 
this world are invariably punished here. 

It is plain from the history of our country that our fore- 
fathers understood this fact. With the experience of the cen- 
turies to guide them, they knew there was no safety to a 
nation but in obedience to God. They read the words : 
'■' Them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise 
me shall be lightly esteemed ; " they knew that whatever walls 
they might put around the Republic, they never could wall it 
at the top ; they could not shield it from Heaven ; it would 
always be open to Him whose bright balances never swerve 
nor rust nor break ; and that all precautions were useless if 
He was its enemy. Their intention accordingly was to secure 
the favor of God and to found a Christian State. Review the 
facts : 

Our early colonists, almost without exception, were moved 
by religious considerations. The Pilgrims and Puritans of 
New England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Romanists of 
Maryland, and the Huguenots of the Sou^-hern coast, all carrie 
to worship God, and all made the Bible the basis of their 
laws. The Revolution was conducted as the struggle of a 
Christian people. The day after Washington took command 
of the army at Cambridge, he issued an order, in which he 
said : 

" The General requires and expects of all officers and soldiers not en- 
gaged on actual duty, a punctual attendance on divine service, to implore 
the blessing of Heaven on the measures used for our safety and defense." 

The spot is pointed out at Valley Forge where Washington 
was overheard praying to Jesus Christ for help for his shiver- 
ing and famishing soldiers. The Continental Congress was 
opened with a prayer (by the Rev. Jacob Duche), which be- 
gan in these words : 

" O Lord ! our heavenly Father, high and mighty King of kings, and 
Lord of lords, who dost from Thy throne behold all the dwellers on earth, 
and reignest with power supreme and uncontrolled over all kingdoms, em- 
pires, and governments ! look down in mercy, we beseech Thee, on these 
American States, who have fled to Thee from the rod of the oppressor, and 
thrown themselves on Thy gracious protection, desiring to be henceforth 
dependent only on Thee. To Thee they have appealed for the righteous- 
ness of their cause ;■ to Thee do they now look up for that countenance and 
support which Thou alone canst give." 



Divisions Hurt our Power. 363 

And after the capture of Burgoyne they set apart a day for 
thanksgiving, that, as they said : 

" They might consecrate themselves to their Divine Benefactor, and 
through the merits of Jesus Christ, beg pardon for their sins ; that they 
might supplicate God's continued blessing upon their efforts, and that that 
kingdom might be promoted which consisteth in righteousness, peace, and 
joy in the Holy Ghost." 

This document, so decidedly evangelical, is imperishably 
inscribed upon the Congressional Journal of 1777. 

So concerned were our early Legislators in the mainte- 
nance of Christianity, that they voted directly for the circula- 
tion of the Bible. Upon the nth of September, 1776, a Com- 
mittee of Congress, after reporting the difficulty of having 
Bibles printed in America, concluded as follows : 

" The use of the Bible is so universal, and its importance so great, that 
your Committee report the above to the consideration of Congress, and if 
Congress shall not think it expedient to order the importation of types and 
paper, the Committee recommend that Congress will order the Committee 
of Commerce to import 20,000 Bibles from Holland, Scotland, or elsewhere, 
into the different ports of the States of the Union." 

Whereupon, it was voted that the Committee on Commerce 
be directed to import 20,000 copies of the Bible. Thus,. while 
money was so scarce that they could hardly buy shoes for the 
army, Congress felt that the Word of God must be furnished, 
and so it became itself the first American Bible Society. 

Again, in 1781, they took the same stand. Mr. Robert 
Aitken, of Philadelphia, having proposed to publish an edition 
of the sacred volume, and having presented a copy to Con- 
gress, that body referred it to the chaplains for revision, 
who, having reported favorably, the following resolution was 
passed : 

" Resolved, That the United States, in Congress assembled, highly approve 
of the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the 
interest of religion, as well as an instance of the progress of arts in this 
country ; and being satisfied from the above report of his care and accuracy 
in the execution of the work, they recommend this edition of the Bible to 
the inhabitants of the United States, and hereby authorize him to publish 
this recommendation in the manner he shall think proper. 

" Charles Thompson, Secretary y 

It is astonishing, at first sight, that our Constitution, adopted 



364 Divisions Hti7^t our Power. 

six years later, should contain no mention of God or His 
Word. The Convention that framed that document had 
Washington for its President and leading spirit, and was com- 
posed in great measure of the very men who had passed reso- 
lutions in Congress to circulate the Bible. It cannot be that 
they meant to have the government independent of Chris- 
tianity, for they were mostly pious men, who knew where our 
security lay ; and Judge Story has expressly said: ''At the 
time of the adoption of the Constitution, any attempt to hold 
religion in indifference would have created universal indig- 
nation." 

Why, then, was all religious expression left out of the Con- 
stitution ? Because its framers considered it the mere skele- 
ton of the structure, whose living strength must come from 
another source. The Church of Jesus Christ, the united senti- 
ment of our Christian people, was depended on to point out 
the way of right, to exact honesty and fidelity of administra- 
tion, to infuse that conscience into affairs which alone could 
save this Republic from the destruction that had befallen all 
others. The Body of Christ was expected to pervade and 
vitalize the Body politic. It was the understanding all 
through as was expressed by Alexander Hamilton : '' So long 
as we are a virtuous people, the Constitution will bind us to- 
gether in mutual welfare and happiness ; but when we become 
corrupt, it will bind us no longer." Accordingly, the Conven- 
tion ordained that at the inauguration of a new President, he 
should solemnly make oath to '' preserve, protect, and defend 
the Constitution " ; in other words, the crisis of the whole 
system was to turn upon religious principle and the fear of 
God. Frequently has this been declared in Congress and in 
our courts of law. General Cass said in the United States 
Senate : 

" The fate of a republican government is bound up with the fate of the 
Christian religion, and a people who reject its faith will find themselves the 
slaves either of their own evil passions or of arbitrary power." 

And Chancellor Kent, on a trial for blasphemy in the Su- 
preme Court of New York, delivered this judgment : 

" Nor are we bound by any expressions in the Constitution, as some have 
strangely supposed, either not to punish at all, or to punish indiscriminately, 
the like attacks upon the religion of Mahomet, or of the Grand Llama ; and 
for this plain reason, that the case assumes that we are a Christian people^ 



Divisions liurt our Power, 365 

and the morality of the country is deeply ingrafted upon Christianity, and 
not upon the doctrines and worship of these impostors." 

But the Church does not perform this function in our land. 
Divided into jarring sects, it cannot act with concert or force ; 
it cannot speak the authoritative word of God ; it cannot do 
its duty as the upholder of the national conscience. Chris- 
tians, speaking for themselves or their clan, sometimes lift up 
their voice, but they are unheard. Shorn of power and de- 
nied respect, the Church accepts the situation, disowns public 
responsibility, and lets the nation go its way without religious 
direction. 

The consequence is, our elections are mere scrambles for 
office, and office is the prize for trading politicians. The 
word to Moses was — " Provide out of all the people able men, 
such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place 
such over them to be rulers;". and to David, the Almighty 
said : '^ He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the 
fear of God." But so feeble is Christian influence in this Re- 
public that men are in high position who are not only un- 
godly in conduct, but who even deny that there is a God at 
all. These politicians are entrusted with questions utterly 
beyond their handling or control. What is the true policy in 
maintaining the public credit ? What is the right course as to 
the African, the Chinaman, and -the Indian ? What shall we 
do with Mormonism and Jesuitism? Shall we put the Bible 
in our Public Schools or take it out ? How are we to deal with 
the Communists on the one hand, and with the Monopolists 
and Money-lords on the other? are questions which the un- 
aided human mind is no match for ; they go into depths which 
one Book only penetrates. The politicians merely trifle with 
them; they do not pretend to manage them, but simply let 
them drift. Floods of barbarian ignorance and atheism pour 
into our borders from without, and Huns fiercer than those 
who marched under Attila, and Vandals more bent on destruc- 
tion than those who followed Genseric, are growing up within, 
and in the midst of all, the little intriguers in our State-houses 
and National Capital push on their little schemes with no 
thought beyond that of the courtiers of Louis XV. — " after 
us, the deluge." 

Occasionally some one, thoughtful enough to be frightened, 
lifts up a voice for help. Says the New Haven Register : 



2,66 Divisions Httrt our Power. 

" What a magnificent spectacle would it not present, in this hour of na- 
tional humiliation and disgrace, for the united clergy of America, waiving 
all denominational bitterness and asperity in the past, to come together on 
a fixed day and join in simultaneous prayers to Heaven to save our country 
from the frightful demoralization and corruption into which it has fallen ; 
to pray that a merciful Providence may save both us and our country from 
becoming the reproach of nations and a hissing and a byword in the earth." 

This was an appeal in the right direction. Not the " united 
clergy," but the CHURCH does hold in her hand the solution 
of our difficulties. As the '^ pillar and ground " of God's eter- 
nal Truth, she can speak the words which go straight to the 
core of all national problems, and say with serene confidence — 
'^ Thus saith the Lord : This is the way, walk ye in it." 

Were the Church as she ought to be, her counsel would be 
sought and her voice would be listened to ; but represented 
only by discordant sects, she is no element in national affairs 
at all. Instead of putting the name of God in the Constitu- 
tion, the danger is that His Sabbath will be taken from our 
statute books and His Word from our youth. 

Religion of every sort has come to be regarded as an exter- 
nal affair, which has nothing to do with matters of State. It 
comes into our National halls only as an old lady recently 
entered the Capitol at Washington. Congress was not in ses- 
sion and the building was very still ; a slow, feeble step was 
heard coming up the stairs ; it was a little old lady, who put 
her hand painfully on her heart a moment, and then said to 
the doorkeeper : '^ May I go in to the Representatives' Hall ?" 
" It's all shut up. Madam, there's nothing going on there." 
" Please, may I see it?" " Well, you may go in a moment." 
Some time after, when the hour for closing had arrived, the 
doorkeeper, not having seen the old lady come out, went in 
to find her. She was nowhere to be seen. Searching about, 
he at last found her up behind the Speaker's desk kneeling at 
the chair, praying for the nation. That good mother's prayer, 
going up direct to heaven, likely as not did us more service 
than a whole session of Congress ; such prayers are what pre- 
serve us at all ; but in that way only does Christianity make 
itself felt ; it is altogether an outside thing, which is only 
allowed to come in between the sessions and kneel at the 
empty chairs; it must not dare to lift up its voice in public 
defense of right or protest against wrong. 



Divisions Hurt oitr Power. '^6'] 

When that great iniquity, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (repeal- 
ing the Missouri Compromise of 1820, a settlement which had 
kept the country quiet for thirty years) was agitated in Con- 
gress, three thousand clergymen sent in a petition in behalf of 
peace and fidelity to sacred compacts. The idea of clergymen 
giving advice to Congress ! The petition was put under the 
table with scorn ; and the ministry thereafter kept silent and 
looked on while the politicians led us into a bloody war. 
"An unwarrantable intrusion" was the cry at the Capitol. 
" We don't want religion brought into politics ! " If religion 
is not wanted in politics, we would like to know where on 
earth it is wanted. 

We may be sure our religion will not go into politics the 
way we are now. Our sects may gather social and fashionable 
congregations, they may increase in worldly membership and 
worldly gold, but they never can have the power which be- 
longs to the One Church of God. We have days of fasting 
and prayer for the conversion of our country ; it is good ; but 
first let us fast and pray for our conversion to each other. 
Heal our dissensions, O Shepherd of Israel. '' Bless ms, O 
God, that Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving 
health among all nations." 

CHURCH POWER— NO DANGER. 

A strange objection is heard to all this, sometimes even 
from Christians themselves. ^^ Division of the Church is safer ; 
united, it would have too much power in the country ^ 

It is remarkable that the Church of Jesus Christ, meant to 
bring peace and good-will on earth, and to give poor and 
weary man a rest in the bosom of God, should be looked 
upon in this way, as a tigress which must be torn in pieces to 
keep her from tearing us in pieces. The idea has come from 
the old popish hankering after temporal dominion. We read 
how the papacy, arrayed in a triple crown, laid nations under 
its interdict, and deposed sovereigns and crushed human lib- 
erty in its folds as a boa-constrictor does an ox. So we trem- 
ble at thought of a united Church, and think of some terrible 
ecclesiasticism with its prelates and minions pressing upon 
the people. 

It is all a misconception. Christ not only said His kingdom 
was not of this world, but He left it so that it could not pos- 



o 



6S Divisions Hurt our Power. 



sibly become a worldly kingdom. It cannot be in any way an 
earthly institution. According to the Bible, which is its 
charter, the Church is simply the group of Christians in each 
place around the invisible person of Christ. The bond of each 
group is spiritual, and the bond uniting the groups is spiritual. 
It has no authority to make any law outside of the Bible, 
or to form any federation crossing two corporation limits. 
The great hierarchy of Rome and the little hierarchies of Prot- 
estantism are human organizations with human ambitions, 
and the supremacy of any one of them would be dangerous ; 
but the Church of the Bible is nothing of the kind ; it is the 
Body only of Jesus Christ, its only organization is in Him, and 
its only strength is the strength which comes from H is Spirit and 
His words. It is precisely such a strength as every wise and good 
and venerable man exerts over a community. That kind of 
strength is no menace to our liberties. 

Were all Christians united as the Bible directs, they would 
have power — no doubt of that — tremendous power; moved 
by one impulse and speaking with one voice, they would but- 
tress every righteous law, and push on every beneficent enter- 
prise ; our venal politicians and sordid monopolies and rum- 
shops and gambling-saloons would begin to feel something ; 
the principles of Christianity would be infused into our courts 
and capitals, into our laws of trade, and dealings with other 
nations. But it would be a power helpful, not antagonistic, 
to the State. Dealing only with conscience and the absolute 
right and wrong, it would speak nothing more as to men or 
plans than that the men should be honest and the plans legit- 
imate. Instead of an interference, such a power is just what 
the Republic needs to keep it from dissolution. 

There would be no danger even if after being united the 
Church should break her charter and become an earthly cor- 
poration. From that moment, covetous of worldly wealth and 
power, and lording it over God's heritage, it would cease to be 
the Church, and would lose the favor of Heaven ; opposition 
would start up within itself; it would divide again into sects, 
and sink back powerless as it is now. 

THE END. 



